Gaming the Wizarding World
by CubsKing
Summary: Just after being selected by the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter discovers a book that will change his life. Fusion with The Gamer manhwa.
1. Chapter 1

**Gaming the Wizarding World**

 **Summary** : Just after being selected by the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter discovers a book that will change his life. Fusion with The Gamer manhwa.

 **Disclaimer** : I just checked my bank balance, and it looks like my offer went through and I now own the Harry Potter series and The Gamer! Woohoo!

Oh. On second look, it just means I'm broke and still own none of the characters depicted herein. Darn...

 **Pairing** : None

 **Author Notes** : This story is already finished and will be 12 chapters long, posted on a regular schedule. It will run from the Triwizard selection to the end of Year 4. So, feel free to leave a review and speculate about what might or might not be yet to come (there's plenty of foreshadowing if you pay attention…), but unless it really rocks my world, it's unlikely to make me rewrite anything. And I might reply with hints, but I won't be revealing plot details, even if you guess correctly.

This story was written due to my desire to see a "Harry as a Gamer" fic that was actually Complete. It contains many references to things that I find funny, some oblique and some blatant. While writing, I have made extensive use of HP Lexicon's Goblet of Fire calendar and the Wikia sections for both Harry Potter and The Gamer. Some inspiration, though none of the actual writing, was taken with permission from Mist of Shadows' fic _Scooby Gamers_ on Twisting the Hellmouth. I've also used several things from SlickRCBD's list of things he wants to see in a fic. And much support was gotten from the Caer Azkaban group.

Despite the numerous reviews by both myself and other people, there may still be errors. If you find any, please let me know so they can be addressed!

Now, without further ado, the story! Enjoy!

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Harry relaxed for the first time in what felt like forever. He luxuriated in the peace and quiet as he hid under his cloak of invisibility in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library. So far, his weekend had been one disaster after another. First his name had been selected as the mathematically-impossible fourth contestant in the Triwizard Tournament, despite the fact he'd made absolutely no effort to try to participate. Immediately following his selection, he'd been insulted, belittled and scoffed at by the other contestants and ministry and school officials. (What was Snape doing in there, anyway?) When the shouting had finally finished, he had headed back to his dorm where the noise of a party and loud accusations were thick in the air. To top it all off, no one believed him that he hadn't wanted to enter. How could they not see that someone was obviously trying to kill him AGAIN?

Sunday morning hadn't started any better than Saturday had finished. After having to endure yet another rant from Ron about the unfairness of it all (And what did he have to complain about, anyway? No one was trying to kill HIM! Well, except maybe the twins, but they were his brothers and didn't really count...), Harry grabbed his invisibility cloak and started to aimlessly wander the halls. When he had come to the entrance to the library, it occurred to him that this might be the one place where he could finally be sure he wouldn't get yelled at. After all, wasn't this the home turf of Madam Pince, whose entire job was to keep it quiet? It was a matter of but a few moments before Harry had weaved his way through the occupants and obstacles and hidden himself away in the secure Restricted Section of the most rigidly-enforced quiet zone in the school.

After a few minutes of relaxing, though, Harry started to get antsy. Since he was still under his invisibility cloak, it occurred to him that now would be the perfect time to browse the shelves of tomes to which he wasn't normally (or, technically, even now) allowed access. He debated for a few moments whether or not he should nose around, but soon his curiosity (and boredom) got the best of him and he started to peruse the shelves.

Very few titles interested Harry. Which really shouldn't have surprised him (After all, he wasn't Hermione!), but he had thought "Restricted" might equate to "Exciting". Instead, they just looked old, musty, and boring. Most of them weren't even in English!

It took a couple minutes, but finally a title did jump out at him. Actually, it was more the size and style that caught his eye. Wedged in between a thick, dusty book on dark rituals and another slightly less dusty but no smaller book on the history of deadly misuses of common kitchen charms was a tall, thin, glossy title. Without moving his hand out from under his cloak, Harry could only see the title on the spine, _The Gamer's Guide_ by Han Jee-Han, and a bit of the cover. As he looked at it closely, the thing it reminded him most of was a comic book. It sure didn't look like any of the other books in the restricted section. Maybe some upper year student had stuck it in the stacks to hide it or something? He couldn't figure out why they would do that, but he'd seen stranger things around the castle.

So, should he stay hidden or should he take the risk of being discovered by sticking his hand out from under his cloak and grabbing it to take a look? After all, it'd give him something to do other than brood about the whole Triwizard mess. He deliberated for a few moments, but again his curiosity and boredom got the better of him. A listen and a look each direction showed no one around. Quickly, Harry slid his arm out, grabbed the book and pulled it back under his cloak.

All of a sudden, in front of the bookshelf, something resembling a poster appeared. It said:

[Shall we play a game?

Yes / No]

Harry froze as he stared at the message in front of him. Only one thought ran through his head: What the bloody hell is that?

After staring dumbly at it for a full minute, Harry finally rebooted his brain and shook his stupor away. He took a few more moments to consider which option he should choose. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he let his Gryffindor nature take over and tapped Yes. After all, he had been looking for something interesting and this would certainly qualify!

Several things happened at once. In his other hand, the book turned into motes of light and disappeared into his head. In front of him, several messages popped up. And knowledge started to unspool in his mind.

Illusion Barriers.  
Gaming Strategy.  
Gamer's Mind.  
Inventory.  
Skill Levels.  
Character Sheet.  
Gamer's Body.  
Grinding.  
Training Strategies.  
Party System.  
Skill Creation.  
The Abyss Auction.

As the stream of topics slowed and finally stopped, Harry took a better look at the display in front of him. He now knew they were system messages to inform him of new skills being learned, quests being created and other significant events. He clicked through the messages informing him he had skills added to his repertoire called A Gamer's Mind and A Gamer's Body. From the info dump, he knew how great those skills were and how much they were going to impact his life. A Gamer's Mind would let him objectively look at any situation into which he was thrust without panicking, a skill he could have used several times over the previous 3 years. A Gamer's Body would keep him from taking physical injuries and allow him to restore health and magic just by sleeping in a bed. That was sure going to make Madam Pomfrey happier and Quidditch a lot less dangerous!

Realizing he'd been stationary too long and that someone might have sensed or seen what had just happened, Harry hurried to get out of there before he was caught. He needed to review and mentally organize everything he'd just learned.

A few minutes later, he had carefully and safely exited the library without detection and resumed his directionless wandering of the halls, still concealed under his cloak. As he walked, he tried to order his thoughts and start making plans. In the past, that had never been one of his strong points. He was hoping A Gamer's Mind would help out in that regard, though. It certainly couldn't hurt!

Before he could make any plans, Harry needed to know if everything he'd learned would work. First of all, he needed to check his stats and levels. Remembering the instructions from _The Gamer's Guide_ , he called out "Status Window".

In front of him appeared another message box, this one filled with information about himself. It said:

[Name: Harry Potter  
Class: The Gamer  
Level: Lv 4

HP: 150  
MP: 225

STR: 6  
VIT: 8  
DEX: 15  
INT: 9  
WIS: 6  
LUK: 7

Money: 9G

Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25  
Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

Gamer's Mind: Max  
Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: Lvl 10 - reduce physical damage 0.1% per PE Level]

Distracted by the status display, Harry wasn't paying attention to where he was going as he considered what he was seeing and what to make of it. He only started paying attention again when he found himself sprawled on his backside after slamming into someone, his cloak flying open in the process.

"Harry! I was just thinking about you!"  
"Hermione! I was just thinking about you!"

They both laughed as they realized what they'd said.

"I was just headed to the library to see if there was anything I could do to help you out," Hermione said. "If I can't find a way to get you out of the Tournament, I plan to do some research and see what I can do to help you prepare."

"I was just there, and you'll never believe what just happened to me!" Harry exclaimed as he helped her to her feet. Keeping a hold on her arm, he pulled her into a convenient nearby empty classroom.

"What?" she asked.

"I was hiding under my invisibility cloak in the restricted section-"

"Harry!" she hissed at him. "You shouldn't-"

"-and I was looking at the book titles to see if anything looked like it might be helpful," Harry continued, ignoring her attempt to interrupt and speaking over top of her. "I found some sort of comic book. When I pulled it off the shelf, a message appeared in the air in front of me!"

"A message? What, are you now on a mission from God?" Hermione asked, skepticism dripping from her voice.

"What?" Harry asked, shocked. "No! Well, I don't think so, at least…"

When Harry appeared deep in thought considering the point and didn't speak again for a few moments, she decided to prompt him. "Well, what did the message say?"

"Right, the message. It said something about playing a game. At the bottom it had "Yes" and "No" buttons, like on those prompts we'd see on the computers back in Primary school, you remember?"

She nodded.

"So, I hit yes and the book suddenly burned up-"

"What?!" she gasped. "You destroyed a book?"

[You have acquired a new skill to sense a bad omen, "Sense Danger."]

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Harry hastily babbled as he unobtrusively dismissed the message with a careful flail of an arm. "I hit yes, the book flashed and disappeared, and now I know everything in the book."

"What?"

"Everything written in the book is in my head now."

"Really? Everything?"

"Yeah."

"And will that work for other books, too? Not that you should destroy any books, of course."

"It's supposed to work that way for any skill books. My new knowledge says it will, but I haven't tried yet, for obvious reasons."

"Do you know what this means?"

"That I can learn things in an instant, but it'll burn up the books."

Hermione sighed. "I am so conflicted and jealous right now…"

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Harry  
Level 4

HP 150  
MP 225

STR 6  
VIT 8  
DEX 15  
INT 9  
WIS 6 (minus 1)  
LUK 7 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 9

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max (Created)  
A Gamer's Body: Max (Created)  
Phys Endurance: 10  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 1  
Sword Mastery: 2  
ID Create/Escape: 1 (Created)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-15


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Harry spent the next half hour telling Hermione all about what he'd learned from _The Gamer's Guide_.

"So, do you have all the abilities that the book talked about?" she asked.

"I think so," he replied. "I got messages about A Gamer's Mind and A Gamer's Body. I was looking at my Status Window when I ran into you, so it seems likely I've got it all. Let me try something." He stared intently at her for a few moments before yelling "Observe!"

Three messages popped up in front of Harry. The first two were informational and said:

[A skill has been created through a special act.]

[Through continuous observation a skill to find the target's information, 'Observe', has been created.]

The third was different. It showed Hermione's stats.

[Name: Hermione Granger  
Class: Bookworm  
Level: Lv 4

HP: 100  
MP: 1000

STR: 4  
VIT: 5  
DEX: 3  
INT: 40  
WIS: 12  
LUK: 5

Money: 5G

Bookworm: +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level]

"Yeah, I can use Observe," he told her.

Hermione pouted. "I can't see my stats. What are they?"

"Well, we're both level 4. I guess that makes sense, since we're in Year 4. I've got more hit points, but you've got way more mana points because your INT is so much higher than mine. Your luck is 5. Mine is 7, but I've got a huge modifier on it called "Loki's Plaything" that gives me +25 or -25, which explains an awful lot. You have a status of Bookworm which lets you learn faster and increases your INT by 25%. We've got matching perks of Witch and Wizard which add 50% to our MP but reduce our WIS by 0.25 points per level. I can see your perks, but I can't see your skills yet, so I must need to level up my Observe skill before I get more detail."

"Yes, that explains many things. Well, let's start working on what we can. We don't want you to destroy any more library books, obviously," Hermione said.

"Obviously."

"I remember hearing about a Doubling charm that sounds like it'd be perfect to let us learn books without destroying the original. I'll go to the library and see what I can find about it. Until then, don't touch any books!"

"I think that's the first time you've ever told me _not_ to study!" Harry said with a laugh. "I guess I'll work on my Observe skill."

They split up and began to go about their self-assigned tasks. After a few minutes, Harry had Observed everything in the classroom and began to wander the halls again. If nothing else, he was curious to see what would he could learn about some of the ghosts and paintings.

An hour later, as he walked towards a tapestry of trolls doing ballet on the 7th Floor near the Gryffindor Common Room, he whispered "Observe". He'd started whispering it after getting weird (well, even more weird than normal) looks from some Second Years earlier.

He closed the two messages that popped up without paying much attention. Then what one of the messages had said percolated through his brain. The information about the painting wasn't what interested him, though. "Observe!" he loudly called, excited for seeing something that wasn't the same boring background information about a painting or a painter for the first time in a while. When the message popped up, he did a quick happy dance.

On the other side of the hallway from the painting, there was a vague outline showing a door. The message said:

[Room of Requirements  
Can create and fill a room to specification.  
Accessed by pacing before the door three times while thinking about the room that is desired.  
Note: Cannot break Gamp's Law.]

"Blimey!" he exclaimed. "I've got to try this and see what it can do!"

Fixing a thought of a lounge room in his mind, Harry started pacing.

As he turned to make his third pass, Hermione hurried into the corridor, headed towards their dorm to see if her friend had returned and to borrow the Marauders' Map to locate him if he hadn't. "Harry!" she cried out as soon as she recognized him.

Just then, a wooden door appeared in the wall next to where he had been pacing. She gasped in shock. "What did you do?"

Harry pulled open the door and whooped in excitement. He stepped inside and was followed moments later by Hermione. She stopped in the doorway in surprise at the comfortable lounge that had appeared. In many ways, it resembled their Common Room with the squashy chairs and fireplace. The shelves of books were a welcome change, though, as was the dominant feature of the room, a regulation-sized snooker table.

Harry was already messing with the balls on the table when Hermione recovered her wits and stepped inside. The door closed by itself behind her.

"What is this room?" she asked in wonder. "I've been all over this floor, and I've never seen it before!"

"I found it by Observing," he replied as he grabbed a cue stick and started whacking away at the cue ball.

Hermione winced as he tore a gash into the felt, then gasped as the table repaired itself. "Do you even know what you're doing?"

"Nope! I've always wanted to play, but the Dursleys never let me. Well, they can't stop me now!" he said as he plowed his cue into the table again.

"Honestly, Harry!" she huffed. "You're not even holding the cue stick right! It's not like whacking with a beater's bat or like playing cricket. It's a slow, controlled stroke. I'm going to have to go back to the Library and see if I can find a book on it for you, won't I?"

Without warning, a thick volume appeared in front of them. Their eyes went wide as it thumped down onto the playing surface of the snooker table. Before Hermione could stop him, Harry reached out and picked it up.

"Harry, wait!" she cried as she foresaw what he was about to do, but it was too late. The book disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Harry, how could you? That might have been a priceless antique!"

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

"Sorry, I wasn't thinking. But I think the room just created it. Let's try this: I require another copy," he said to the room.

A duplicate book appeared in the same spot as the first. Harry grabbed that one, too.

"No!"

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

"Relax, Hermione, I'm not going to destroy this one," he reassured her as he passed over the book. "Besides, it says I've already learned this skill."

As she started reading the book, she cringed as the sound of him tearing another gouge in the felt resonated through the room again. "I thought you learned how to play?"

"Well, I learned the skill," Harry explained, "but my level's still really low. I'll have to practice to improve, just like anything else."

The lightbulb went on in Hermione's mind. "Oh! I get it now. You know what to do, but you're not all of a sudden an expert."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It'd be neat if I was, but it doesn't work that way. I have to level it up. At least in here all the damage gets repaired magically."

"Where is here? You didn't really answer me before. And shouldn't you be doing something to help you survive this tournament?"

"Relax, Hermione," he said. "It's Sunday. The day of rest, remember? Besides, you're the one who wanted to see if I could do everything from the book, so I'm giving it a try. We know I can learn skills from books now. And to answer your other question, this is called the Room of Requirement. It'll make us whatever we want."

"Anything?"

"Well, it said it couldn't break someone's law. Gnat, or something."

"Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration?"

"Dunno. Could be," he said with a shrug.

"Hmm."

"So, do you want to play with me, or should I just keep playing with myself," Harry asked.

"Go ahead. I'm going to look over these bookcases and see what's here."

"There's a surprise…"

They lapsed into silence as each went about their business. Harry leveled up his Snooker skill several times, as well as adding a point of Blunt Weapon Mastery, before he grew tired of playing by himself. He finished his game and dropped the cue on the table before joining Hermione in the comfy chairs where she had several books spread out in front of her. "Whatcha reading?"

"Well, I think I found the spell we were looking for earlier. It's called the Gemino curse. It looks pretty straightforward, so I was about to give it a try."

With that, she stood and moved over to the snooker table. She placed the book she had been reading on the table and, after reviewing the spell one last time, cast it on the book. A moment later, where once there had been a single book, there were now a matched pair.

"That's great!" Harry cried out before his face fell. "Um, which one is the copy?"

"I don't know. Why don't you use Observe and see?"

Harry did just that, pointing to the book on the right. "That's the original."

She handed him the book on the left. "Will it let you learn this?"

Before she'd finished asking, the book in Harry's hand disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Guess so," he replied with a smile. "Now let's see if I can do it."

"Wait!"

"Gemino!"

While Hermione had created just one copy, Harry made a stack, with more appearing all the time. He looked at her in panic, a look that was mirrored on her face. "Did I do that?"

She grabbed her book bag and pulled Harry out the door of the room. As soon as they left the room, the door disappeared and Hermione let out a sigh of relief.

"The reason Gemino is a curse is because if you're not careful, it will keep reproducing," she lectured. "Combine that with your luck and it was time to exit stage left."

Harry nodded. He started to pace in front of the door to recreate the room before he was stopped by a hand on his arm. At that moment, his stomach growled.

"Come on. It's dinner time, so let's head down and eat and come back up here later."

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 4

HP 150  
MP 225

STR 6  
VIT 8  
DEX 15  
INT 9  
WIS 6 (minus 1)  
LUK 7 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 9

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Phys Endurance: 10  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 2 (lvl +1)  
Sword Mastery: 2  
ID Create/Escape: 1  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 1  
Observe: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Snooker: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
Gemino: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 4

HP 100  
MP 1000 (plus 500 plus 250)

STR 4  
VIT 5  
DEX 3  
INT 40 (plus 10)  
WIS 12 (minus 1)  
LUK 5

Money (Galleons): 5

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-17


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

At dinner, Hermione became engaged in conversation about their Herbology homework for the next morning. Harry sat next to her but didn't really participate in the discussion. The rest of their housemates left a wide gap to his side and refused to accept any input from him.

By prior agreement, they chose not to mention anything about Harry's new ability or the Room of Requirements that they'd found.

After they finished eating, they weren't able to separate from their housemates before they got back to the dorm. With Harry still fighting with Ron and with the redhead camped near the entrance in the common room playing chess, he couldn't figure out how to get them back out without causing another scene. And before he spent more than a few moments thinking about it, Hermione pointed out that he still had homework to finish up for the next day's classes anyway.

On the plus side, as he was finishing the Herbology assignment, Harry got a popup.

[Diligent studying causes your INT to go up by 1.]

"Whoa," he said. When Hermione looked up at him, he explained. "My INT just went up from doing homework."

"See!" she crowed. "I told you it was important to study!"

As the week wore on, the oppressive atmosphere continued to surround Harry. There were a scant few people who stood up for him, though several told him privately that they believed him and many more (Including, strangely enough, most of the Slytherins) were taking a wait-and-see approach.

With all their homework and class assignments during the week, it ended up being Saturday before Harry and Hermione had enough free time and found the freedom to slip away and be able to make use of the Room of Requirements again. This time, Hermione set up the room. When they entered, they saw that the room resembled an expanded version of the bookshop from _Funny Face_ , complete with rolling ladders. (Harry, of course, was clueless as to the design's origins, but it had been one of Hermione's childhood dreams to someday have a book room just like that.) It also had an additional open area setup with targets for spellcasting.

With a sigh, partly of contentment and partly of longing, Hermione said, "Perfect! Though I wish I could learn everything in here as easily as you do!"

"Oh," Harry said with embarrassment. "You can. I just have to create a Party and Invite you."

"And you didn't tell me before?" she asked frostily.

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

"I forgot," he mumbled.

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

"Look, I'm sorry!" he said hastily. "I was a little overwhelmed the other day when it all happened! Here! Create Party Study."

[You've created a party.]

"Invite Party Hermione".

"Ah!" she cried as the message popped up in front of her face. "OK, now I see why you were a little surprised and flustered. Sorry I jumped down your throat."

"Thanks. Go ahead and hit yes."

"OK."

"Now ask for your Status Window."

"Status Window."

While she reviewed her stats, Harry began to look at the bookshelves for something that jumped out at him as useful to learn for the tournament.

"So how much of the books that you've consumed do you remember?" she asked a few minutes later as she approached her friend. She started looking over the titles in the small stack of books that interested him enough for him to pull them off the shelves.

"Pretty much all of the skills. My memory seems to get sharper the higher my levels get, too. Why?"

When Harry looked over at Hermione, he nearly squeaked at the unholy glee he could see in her eyes. "I've got a bad feeling about this," he muttered.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked. "Start copying books so we can learn them all!"

"I can't believe I'm the one saying this," he counselled, "but shouldn't we stop and plan first instead of just learning things willy-nilly? We're going to have to train whatever skills we learn until they're useful, remember?"

"But we don't even know what you're going to have to do yet!" she argued. "We need to learn everything possible so that you'll have some options no matter what you face."

Harry wanted to press his point but decided to just go along. Resistance would be futile, as past experience had shown that he wouldn't win anyway. After all, there was no way he was going to be able to talk the bookworm out of something that would let her literally consume so much knowledge.

[Making good decisions causes your WIS to go up by 1.]

"Fine. You start over there and I'll copy these," he said.

"Do you want to practice again?"

"Probably a good idea. Let me just look over the instructions again, then I'll do try just one to start with. Character Sheet."

After a couple moments, he found the spell in his skill list. First he had to open the Curses group before he located Gemino. A few seconds of review and he was ready to go. Pulling his wand, he pointed at one of the books he'd already pulled from the shelf, he said "Gemino."

The book duplicated just once, as it should have. However, after just a few seconds, the copy started to visibly age. As they watched, it crumbled into dust and vanished.

"Huh. I did not see that coming," Hermione commented.

"Guess I'll have to level it up before it'll be useful. Gemino."

[Gemino's level has risen by 1.]

Another dozen tries saw his level rise three more times. A second dozen gave him another two, plus a level in Curses. By now, copies were lasting 5 minutes and getting longer with each casting. They decided to modify the original plan so they were working on adjacent bookcases instead of on opposite sides of the room. When they finished each shelf, they'd stop to consume the other's books before Harry's copies self-destructed.

It took 3 hours to get through the shelves. By the time they finished, Harry's head was swimming from all the spells, curses, jinxes, cantrips, runes, wards and the staggering number of other esoteric magical subjects that they'd just learned.

He was beginning to the think the grin would have to be surgically removed from Hermione's face, though. He was willing to put up with quite a bit to see his friend so happy.

The only downer had been that they could only absorb skill books. Anything that was pure theory or informational wouldn't work. Harry was disappointed that he was still going to have to study for his classes. Hermione was only disappointed that there was so much knowledge she would have to go about learning the slow way. She consoled herself with the fact that at least she had it available to her when they were in the Room of Requirements and the access to that was only limited by the time she was in school.

Being able to learn French (and German, Russian, Latin, Signed English and about a dozen other languages) in an instant was pretty cool, though, even if it was going to take a lot of practice to make him fluent...

Now the real work was about to begin. They picked a few spells that seemed the most interesting or useful and started practicing.

It quickly became apparent that Hermione's high INT and WIS stats let her practice harder and longer than Harry could. He was going to need to raise those stats and soon if he wanted to even survive the Triwizard Tournament, let alone have a chance to win.

In order to get some skill points to spend, he started working on his ability with Instant Dungeons. His stat sheet said he had both Blunt Weapon Mastery and Sword Mastery, so he knew he would be able to do physical damage to opponents in an Illusion Barrier while his Mana recharged enough to resume spellcasting.

A quick examination of ID Create showed that currently Harry could only make an empty dungeon. "Guess I'll have to have the Room of Requirement provide my targets until I get my level up in ID Create, too," he muttered.

"Did you say something?" Hermione asked as she finished up the latest spell she was practicing.

"Just thinking out loud," he replied. "I need my MP to regenerate faster. There's a few things that would do that. We could try find some sort of item that recharges my magic. We could try to make one. And I could increase my WIS level. If my ID Create level was high enough, we could use an Illusion Barrier with faster recharge. What'd be really nice would be if we had a way to access the Abyss Auction they talked about in _The Gamer's Guide_ to…"

Harry trailed off as a very thin book appeared in front of them with _Abyss Auction_ written across the cover.

"What's that?" Hermione asked as she reached for the folio. To her surprise, though, Harry snatched it up before she could.

"Un-bloody-believable!" he said as he flipped it open. "This is great! We can get just about anything from here!" He frowned. "Well, we could if we had the money for any of it."

"And how are we going to get money?"

"Well, I've got a bunch in my vault at Gringotts," Harry said, "But I don't have a way to access it from here. And I don't even know how much I have or what it's supposed to be used for, so it's probably best not to use it until I learn. But there is another way."

"What?"

"Haven't you played any games? We'll kill monsters for fun and profit, of course."

"Harry!" she said in shock. "You want us to go out hunting monsters?"

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

[Sense Danger's level has risen by one.]

"No, we'll do it in here in Instant Dungeon that they can't escape but we can if need be," he explained. "I can only create an empty dungeon so far, so we'll have to have the room provide us with opponents. Actually, that might be better, anyway, as it should be able to provide just about anything we can dream up."

"And how are you going to keep them from killing us?"

"We'll only use low level monsters. One or two X's to start with. I think we could handle 3s, but we'll start low and make sure."

"That sounds good. So, basically, nothing we've learned about from Hagrid in Care of Magical Creatures, huh?" she said with a smile.

"Pretty much. We'll need to work that Protego shield charm we read about before we up the difficulty, I think."

"That works for me."

Two things became obvious in short order. First, the low level monsters were not a challenge, even when they ran out of magic and used room-provided swords instead. Second, the loot drops for Harry were highly affected by his status as Loki's Plaything. While Hermione's monsters were pretty consistently worth about two knuts per monster level, Harry's varied wildly. Many would give him garbage like a pile of pocket lint or a speck of floo powder. And then sometimes he'd squash a flobberworm and get two galleons.

It also seemed to affect what level of monsters were generated. While it was humorous to see a massive Level 25 flobberworm, that could quickly turn out to be a liability when facing something that was actually capable of harming them. It was something they'd have to be aware of as the difficulty and deadliness of their opponents went up.

After half an hour, they had each gained a little experience and 10 galleons on their stat sheet. Harry had managed to level up his Sword Mastery twice, and Hermione had added the skill and leveled it twice.

"We're not making much progress. Let's stop and rethink this," Hermione said.

Just then, Harry's stomach rumbled. "How about we think while we eat some lunch and come back here afterwards?"

Hermione nodded just as her stomach gave a gurgle of agreement as well.

All throughout lunch, they huddled together over a sheet of parchment at the far end of the table, listing the skills they thought would be most useful and in which order they wanted to practice them. They also came up with a list of creatures, in order of difficulty, they could face to up their physical and magical stats.

For once, Harry thought, he was glad that almost everyone was shunning him as it let them work in peace.

"Might I suggest that you try to only speak in whatever language you're focusing on learning while you train?" a dreamy voice said from behind, surprising Harry and Hermione.

They turned and saw a younger girl from Ravenclaw standing there, looking over their shoulders, though she seemed to be focusing more on their plates than the list.

"What?" they chorused.

"Well, you are obviously setting up your training plan together," she said. "You can kill two Hovering Hornswogglers with a single stone that way, as the saying goes."

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Harry asked.

"And what are Hovering Hornswogglers?" Hermione demanded.

"Doesn't everybody know? They're the African cousins of our European Blibbering Humdingers, of course," she explained. "And I'm Luna Lovegood. I already know all about you, so why don't you Observe me to fill in some of the blanks."

Harry stared at her dumbly for a few moments before taking a glance at Hermione. She looked as gobsmacked as he felt. Luna kept smiling slightly vacantly at them, obviously waiting. Eventually, he did as she suggested.

[Name: Luna Lovegood  
Class: Clairvoyant  
Level: Lv 3]

Beyond her basic stats, there were a lot of symbols on her stat sheet that Harry didn't recognize. (Had he been more in tune with popular culture, he might have recognized it as Aurebesh, but he wasn't, so he didn't).

"I can't understand most of it," he admitted.

"Maybe you will when you're more 1337," Luna simply said. Without warning, she switched to speaking in French. "Now, shall we get started?"

"I'm sorry, we?" Hermione asked in the same language.

Harry's face scrunched in concentration as he tried to puzzle out what they were saying.

"Of course," she replied. "There are a number of items and skills I'd like to pick up myself, so I will be joining you."

"Know how we doing what?"

"Your pronunciation is atrocious, Harry Potter, and your grammar could use work as well," she said, ignoring his question. "But it will get better as you level up, I'm sure. Now let's go."

Without giving either of them a chance to argue, she turned on her heel and headed out of the Great Hall and towards the stairs to the 7th floor.

Harry and Hermione exchanged another puzzled glance. Harry shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the parchment and headed out after her. Hermione sat another few moments before shaking her head, getting up, and rushing after the other two.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 4

HP 150  
MP 250 (plus 125)

STR 6  
VIT 8  
DEX 15  
INT 10 (lvl +1)  
WIS 7 (minus 1, lvl +1)  
LUK 7 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 19

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Phys Endurance: 10  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 2  
Sword Mastery: 4 (lvl +2)  
ID Create/Escape: 2 (lvl +1)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 1  
Observe: 5  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 11 (lvl +10)  
French: 1 (Created)  
German: 1 (Created)  
Latin: 1 (Created)  
Signed English: 1 (Created)  
Spanish: 1 (Created)  
Russian: 1 (Created)  
Protego: 1 (Created)  
Occlumency: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 4

HP 100  
MP 1000 (plus 500 plus 250)

STR 4  
VIT 5  
DEX 3  
INT 40 (plus 10)  
WIS 12 (minus 1)  
LUK 5

Money (Galleons): 15

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
German: 1 (Created)  
Latin: 1 (Created)  
Signed English: 1 (Created)  
Spanish: 1 (Created)  
Russian: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 3

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-19


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

By the time Hermione caught up, Harry and Luna had already arrived at the Room of Requirements with the door just appearing as Harry finished pacing.

"That could come in useful," Luna muttered in Mandarin.

"What is that?" Harry asked, still speaking French.

"Nothing. Aren't you forgetting something, Harry?"

"What?" Both Harry and Hermione asked as they stepped back into the same room from earlier.

"My invitation."

Harry flushed. "Oh. Sorry. Here. Invite Party Luna."

[French's level has risen by one.]

"Thank you, Harry Potter," she said as she reached out and hit Accept. "I can feel it already. Continue with your training while I learn the things I don't already know. I'll join you two when I'm done."

Harry looked at Hermione again and shrugged. "It's as good a plan as any, I guess."

"Until we have an idea what you're facing in the Tournament, why don't we start working our way through the Hogwarts curriculum?" Hermione asked. "After all, if they expect all of the competitors to finish the competition, they're going to have to do events that use spells and skills the champions know, right?"

"You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? As you've always said, though, wizards aren't known for their common sense. But I don't have any better ideas right now."

By dinner time, Harry had levelled up quite a bit in languages. He got up to 10 in French in the first hour before they switched to German to let Hermione work on a language she didn't know. (Luna was apparently a polyglot or was somehow otherwise already conversant in the major world languages…)

His level was up to 20 in German and 20 in Latin ("It'll help you understand spellcasting better") by the time they stopped. ID Create and ID Escape were also up to 10 and were starting to generate their own opponents, giving them some tougher but less diverse and more predictable enemies to face. His LUK was still causing their levels to vary quite a bit, though it was helping the loot drops to be more profitable.

Defeating better monsters had netted them each 50 galleons and 4 levels of Sword Mastery, and the physical exertion had added points in STR, VIT and DEX. Observing monsters had also helped Harry level Observe up to 12.

He had now mastered just over half of the fourth year spells. Hermione had all of them down and had started on fifth year. Luna was quickly catching up as well.

Best of all, they'd each raised their overall level and had 5 points to spend.

"We're going to have to keep upping our WIS as our level goes up to counteract the effect of Witch and Wizard," Harry pointed out. "I think for the next couple dozen levels we should plan to put at least 1 point per level into that, since it should make our other decisions better. That will also increases our mana regeneration and mana resistance."

[Making good decisions causes your WIS to go up by 1.]

He let out a laugh. "It looks like the world agrees with me since I just got a level in WIS for that little stratagem. So I think I'm going to add 3 to INT and 2 to WIS."

"I will, too," Hermione said.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Luna opined.

"Why not?" Hermione demanded.

"Well, your INT is already really high. Shouldn't you increase your STR to increase your HP, and maybe VIT to up the regeneration?" Harry said, which got an affirming nod from Luna.

"I suppose," Hermione agreed. "But shouldn't you increase yours, too?"

"Yes, I should and I would if I could. But since this tournament is supposed to be a magical competition, I think it's even more important to get my MP and regeneration up so I can train harder and longer, especially if we're going to gain physical skill levels fighting monsters. How are you planning on assigning your points, Luna?"

"Do not worry about it, Harry Potter," Luna replied. "I know what I'm doing."

"And you don't feel like sharing?"

Luna just smiled.

"It's like talking with the Headmaster," Harry grumbled, which just caused Luna to grin widely.

"So, I guess I'll put 1 each in STR and VIT and alternate from now on," Hermione said, "and add 1 INT and 2 WIS."

"Sounds good. I'm planning on doing the same thing once I get my INT up enough to have a strong mana pool."

"Unless you train your physical levels up high enough. Or until you enchant something to increase your levels," Luna suggested.

A flash of insight ran through Hermione's mind. "Is that why you're wearing a Butterbeer cork necklace?"

"Observe."

[Necklace of Strength and Comfort

Adds 100% to HP and keeps the wearer comfortable no matter the climate.]

"Very clever," Harry complimented her.

"Yes, I thought so," Luna agreed. "It keeps away the Woozles and it's also something no one would bother to steal."

Abruptly, Harry's demeanour changed as his expression became fierce. "Is someone stealing your things? Tell me who and I'll put a stop to it."

"Again, do not worry about it, Harry Potter," Luna said airily. "My things will be returned to me sooner or later, as they always have been. I still have everything I need. I do not think that you saying something to help me would actually help right now anyway."

"Yeah, that's probably true," he said regretfully. "I just hate bullies and thieves."

"Me too," Hermione added. "If you change your mind, let us know and we'll do what we can to help."

"Thank you. The offer, though unnecessary, is appreciated."

"Well, enough about that. I think it's time for dinner. We can come back after we eat," Harry said.

"I would love to, but I was planning to finish my homework yet this evening," Luna said, sounding regretful about having to decline the offer.

"Yeah, we should probably do that, too," Hermione agreed.

Harry wasn't enthusiastic about it, but he didn't object, either. "So, no more training tonight. I guess we'll meet back here tomorrow morning after breakfast, then?"

"Sounds good."

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 5 (lvl +1)

HP 200  
MP 325 (plus 162.5)

STR 8 (lvl +2)  
VIT 9 (lvl +1)  
DEX 16 (lvl +1)  
INT 13 (lvl +3)  
WIS 10 (minus 1.25, lvl +3)  
LUK 7 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 69

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Phys Endurance: 10  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 2  
Sword Mastery: 8 (lvl +4)  
ID Create/Escape: 10 (lvl +8)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 1  
Observe: 12 (lvl +7)  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 11 (lvl +10)  
French: 10 (lvl +9)  
German: 20 (lvl +19)  
Latin: 20 (lvl +19)  
Signed English: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Russian: 1  
Protego: 1  
Occlumency: 1

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 5 (lvl +1)

HP 150  
MP 1025 (plus 512.5 plus 256.3)

STR 7 (lvl +3)  
VIT 7 (lvl +2)  
DEX 5 (lvl +2)  
INT 41 (plus 10.25)  
WIS 14 (minus 1.25, lvl +2)  
LUK 5

Money (Galleons): 65

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 7 (lvl +4)  
German: 50 (lvl +49)  
Latin: 50 (lvl +49)  
Signed English: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Russian: 1

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 4 (lvl +1)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-22


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Sunday followed much the same pattern as Saturday. Hermione mastered the spells in the room-provided textbooks up to NEWT level. Harry was almost done with the required OWL spells, and Luna was just a few spells behind him. With Harry's skill in creating dungeons increasing, he was able to tailor the types and levels of monsters even more than before. They each managed to pick up 2 overall levels and 100 galleons in addition to several levels of Sword Mastery, putting them at 12. They also gained several levels in STR, VIT and DEX.

"You need to learn Crafting and Enchanting," Luna informed Harry and Hermione after they finished as they relaxed in the sitting area of Harry's original configuration of the Room of Requirements. They had just finished assigning the points they'd earned. (Well, Harry and Hermione had. Luna was still being cagey about just about everything…)

"Well, let's see what the room will give us," Hermione said, staring expectantly at the coffee table in between their chairs.

A book on Enchanting appeared. Unfortunately, it was more of a history book than an instructional one and didn't offer a skill prompt.

"I guess we'll have to buy something from that Abyss Auction," she said, disappointed to find something the room couldn't give them.

"Or I can owl my father for my books from home," Luna added. "He'll be here to cover the first task, so I'm sure he can get them to us, either by shrinking and owl mailing them or bringing them when he comes."

"Yeah, that'd be great," Harry said as he pulled the _Abyss Auction_ listings from his Inventory. "In the meantime, we can check to see if there's any books you don't have that look good or see if there's anything else interesting for sale."

They all squeezed into one of the big squishy chairs together and started looking through the book. There were several items that looked interesting, but Luna said they'd be able to create them easily enough fairly quickly. The only skill books relating to Enchanting or Crafting that were listed were ones that Luna already had.

"We may have to go to Waterstone's or Foyles to find something else useful," Hermione said, a look of glee in her eyes at the prospect. "They probably won't have anything on Enchanting, but I'm sure they'll have lots of choices for Crafting."

"The Southbank Book Market often has fascinating books as well," Luna interjected, "and you can find some real gems at Oxfam."

"I didn't know you knew anything about Muggle London," Hermione said in surprise.

"I know many things that will surprise you, Hermione Granger," Luna said airily.

"No way!" Harry shouted.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"There's a skill book in here I just have to get!"

"A skill book? What is it?"

"It's a written set of instructions that will teach us how to do something, but that's not important right now. If we get this book, we could learn unassisted flight!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! Can you imagine? How cool would that be?" Harry said with a dreamy smile of his own gracing his face.

"Did you see the cost?" Hermione asked. Harry didn't respond. "Harry, it's 10,000 galleons! At this rate, it's going to take us years to earn that much."

"Don't ruin his fantasy," Luna said. "Besides, it won't always be that hard. And there are other ways to pick up skill books."

"What do you mean?"

"As we face tougher monsters, the value will go up," she explained. "And boss battles even more so. Plus, once Harry raises his LUK, you'll be surprised what will show up."

"You know something, don't you?" Hermione said. "Well, tell me!"

"Where would be the fun in that?"

Hermione ground her teeth in frustration.

"For the daughter of dentists, you should really know to be more careful of your teeth."

"Grrr."

"Hey, look what else they have," Harry said, unknowingly breaking up that conversation before it became violent. "Books on being a metamorph or an animagus. How awesome would that be?"

"And fairly affordable, too, at only 500 galleons each. We may be able to get those yet this month," Hermione said.

"That would be wonderful," Luna agreed. "What kind of animal do you think you'd be? I think I'll be a Crumple-Horned Snorkack."

"A what? I've never heard of those before, either in the wizarding or mundane worlds. And I know they're not in any of the Creatures textbooks…"

"Just because they can't be found in your books doesn't mean they don't exist."

"Well, if they existed-"

"Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" Harry said, again interrupting a brewing argument. He was pointing to an entry in the _Abyss Auction_ listings.

"You are indeed, Harry Potter."

"We have to get that," Hermione declared.

"Agreed," Harry said as he reached out to touch the entry. From the book popped up a holographic message.

[Triwizard Tournament Information Packet  
50G.

Purchase?  
Yes / No]

He pressed Yes.

[Please provide registered username.]

"Username? How do I get one of those?" Harry asked.

"I can help you setup your account later, Harry Potter. Until then, we can use my account. Login as MoonLover81."

Harry did as he was told. Almost instantly he heard the sound of a cash register. A few seconds later, a window appeared in the wall just in time for an owl to fly in. It came towards Luna with a packet attached to its leg. She relieved the owl of its package and it promptly flew back out. The window disappeared behind it.

While Hermione reviewed the packet that was handed off to her, Luna walked Harry though setting up an account.

"HarryPotter"

[That username has been used. Please try another.]

"Harry_Potter "

[That username has been used. Please try another.]

"HarryJPotter"

[That username has been used. Please try another.]

"HJPotter"

[That username has been used. Please try another.]

After trying every conceivable form of his name, Harry gave up and settled on SuperSeeker1980.

"Dragons!?" Hermione shouted. "They have you facing dragons in the first task?"

"WHAT?!"

"The ministry has ordered 4 nesting mother dragons," she said, still in shock.

"A Swedish Short-Snout, a Common Welsh Green, a Chinese Fireball and a Hungarian Horntail," Luna said without looking.

Harry turned a fierce glare on her. "You knew and didn't tell us?" Harry asked angrily.

"I didn't know," Luna replied. "I just saw."

"Oh. Dragons. Wow. We're going to have to really step up to prepare for that. What does it say for the rest of the tasks?"

"Um, let me check," Hermione replied as she shuffled through the pages. "There's no specifics for the second task. All they say is that it'll be a traditional Scottish game out at the Black Lake. The third task will be some sort of maze full of creatures with the Triwizard Cup in the middle. Oh, it says there's going to be a Yule Ball, too."

"Hmm. Hopefully we'll get more information as they get closer. Well, we can worry about it later. For now, we're going to have to really work hard to level up so I'll have a chance against the dragons."

"Does the room have anything that will help us focus more?" Luna asked.

A stack of books obediently appeared. Harry and Hermione recognized several of them from seeing them first year in Hagrid's hut. Within minutes, each had absorbed copies of the books that they could, though there were quite a few that they couldn't.

While Luna and Hermione started reading the other books, Harry began to step up his physical training. He wanted to get his sword skills up as high as possible in the 15 days remaining before the first task. He was also going to need to up his physical stats if he was going to do any real damage or avoid claws and flames. "I need more time," he grumbled.

"Oh!" Hermione gasped, causing Harry to turn back towards the ladies. There on the table was a time turner, an instruction booklet, and a thick book entitled _Relativity and B-Theory_.

"That'll do," he said as he copied the books and grabbed a set.

[ID Create options upgraded.]

"Well, that's weird. Skills List."

"What's weird?" Hermione asked.

"Looks like I've got more options for Illusion Barriers now. I can run it with time compression. Looks like it's only 2:1 at the moment, but it says I'll get more options with level ups."

"We'll have more time to study? Great!"

"Yeah."

"Well, make it so."

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 7 (lvl +2)

HP 275  
MP 500 (plus 250)

STR 11 (lvl +3)  
VIT 11 (lvl +2)  
DEX 17 (lvl +1)  
INT 20 (lvl +7)  
WIS 13 (minus 1.75, lvl +3)  
LUK 7 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 119

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Phys Endurance: 10  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 2  
Sword Mastery: 12 (lvl +4)  
ID Create/Escape: 13 (lvl +3)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 1  
Observe: 17 (lvl +5)  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 11  
French: 25 (lvl +15)  
German: 50 (lvl +30)  
Latin: 45 (lvl +25)  
Signed English: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Russian: 1  
Protego: 1  
Occlumency: 1

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 7 (lvl +2)

HP 250  
MP 1175 (plus 587.5 plus 293.8)

STR 10 (lvl +3)  
VIT 9 (lvl +2)  
DEX 9 (lvl +4)  
INT 47 (plus 11.75, lvl +6)  
WIS 17 (minus 1.75, lvl +3)  
LUK 5

Money (Galleons): 165

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 12 (lvl +5)  
German: Max (lvl +50)  
Latin: Max (lvl +50)  
Signed English: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Russian: 1

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 6 (lvl +2)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-24


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Time quickly blurred together for Harry. All of his free time was spent in time compression in the Room of Requirements, mostly with Hermione and occasionally with Luna as well. With a Hogsmeade weekend coming up, Hermione was determined to loot as much money as she could from monsters so that she'd be able to afford a wide variety of books in London. She'd already worked out a detailed plan and itinerary for their day, starting with stealthily Flooing from the Hog's Head to the Leaky Cauldron. She planned to pick up all the books from the famous bookshops on Charing Cross Road and the Southbank Book Market that her parents had never let her get before.

Harry was already having nightmares about it. At least he had his inventory so he wouldn't end up lugging a mountain of books taller than himself around all day…

Hermione was putting some of her compressed time into working on charming a backpack to directly access it. It would allow her a way to get to it without breaking the Statute of Secrecy

An unexpected benefit that Harry quickly found from his boosted INT was that homework was coming a lot easier for him. He'd done it to get more mana available but to his delight found that he wasn't spending nearly as much time trying to understand the material as before, leaving him significantly more time to train.

Harry had added another 6 levels to ID Create so he was creating illusion barriers with up to 10:1 time compression. Now that he had a firm idea of what he needed to do to survive the upcoming challenge, he was able to focus on a small number of physical skills (Sword and Blunt Weapon Mastery and Physical Endurance) and magical spells (Stupefy, Protego and Finite).

While Hermione was mostly interested in fighting monsters using spells and swords, Luna was much more likely to want to "get her Ninja Turtle on" and spar with Harry using hand-held weapons. Since both styles of fighting were training different skills, Harry was happy to oblige.

With all the extra time and intense work, their skill levels started to climb dramatically. By the time the Hogsmeade weekend arrived a couple days ahead of the first task, the changes were becoming physically apparent. They had taken to fighting monsters with a minimum rating of XXX and were each able to handle mini bosses from that class. They'd even fought some XXXX creatures, though they were being careful about when and how many of those they faced in a single illusion barrier so they didn't get trapped fighting a boss that significantly outclassed them.

Early on the Saturday morning of the Hogsmeade visit, Harry crashed on one of the sofas and took a few moments to relax. While he appreciated all the skills, levels and loot he'd received from the intense training, he was looking forward to the bit of down time they'd be spending in London. A change of scenery was just what he needed to relieve some of the mental fatigue that had been slowly building.

After assigning his points, Harry reviewed his stats. He was still quite happy to see the Mana Affinity skill that he and Hermione had gotten when they'd reached 50 INT. Since then, he'd poured a lot of points into improving his luck and had managed to get it above 0 even when his modifier fell on the negative side. Combining the harder monsters and his increased luck, he'd started getting significantly better loot drops. The 1,000 galleons he'd raked in was certainly testament to that. (And "Accio loot" was quickly becoming his favorite spell ever!)

Perhaps the best thing he'd gotten so far was a skill book called _Everything the Ministry Refuses to Teach You About Transportation Spells_. He'd made copies for each of them before sticking the original in his inventory and consuming his copy. Immediately they began working on mastering Apparition as part of their combat skills. He quickly found that he had a knack for it and that with each level, it improved several factors: it got quieter, quicker, less mana-intensive and he could travel farther. (Well, it said he could go farther. There was only so much space the Room of Requirements could provide for testing it out…)

He'd collected quite a few different animal skins for use as leather when crafting. He'd gotten some low grade weapons from drops, too. He was planning on seeing if he could learn some patterns before melting them down and creating something better. Luna had mentioned both of those were possible to do, so he thought it'd be worth a shot. Even if he never made a blade as good as Gryffindor's (though with his luck, it was always possible), he was going to at least give it a try. If nothing else, he should be able to make some money selling items through the Abyss.

Before he went to sleep, he checked in the _Abyss Auction_ listings to see what was available. While many of the lower-level items had changed, he wasn't overly interested in them. Flipping pages, he was disappointed to see that the Metamorph book had been purchased. He quickly purchased _Unleashing Your Inner Animal_ for 500 galleons before he lost the chance. After taking the delivery, he made a copy to consume and stuck the original into his inventory so he could share it with his friends later.

After the equivalent of a full night's sleep squeezed into 1 real-time hour (hooray for time compression!), Harry headed down to breakfast.

Just before he, Hermione and Luna left to go to Hogsmeade and then on to London, he managed to get a few private moments with his fellow Hogwarts champion when he caught Cedric alone in the Entrance Hall. "Do you know what the first task is going to be?" he asked.

"Not specifically, no," the Hufflepuff admitted.

"I suggest you go to the library and check out the book _Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit_ as soon as possible."

Cedric blanched. "We have to fight dragons?"

Harry nodded.

"Thanks for letting me know," he said in a very strained voice. "Excuse me, but I need to get to the library right away."

Harry also told the other champions, impressing them by speaking their native languages, though they each seemed to already have an inkling of what they would be facing.

The trip to the Leaky Cauldron was mercifully uneventful. Exiting to the muggle side, they were soon scouring one bookshop after another.

Hermione managed to spend all of her money, as well as quite a sum that she borrowed from Harry and Luna, purchasing various tomes she felt might come in useful. She also purchased every book she could find that triggered a skill prompt. Several times she found herself having to suppress the urge to cackle madly as she looked at everything she was purchasing. She didn't want to frighten the shop owners, after all!

Harry picked up a collection of crafting, smithing and DIY books. He also purchased a large number of music-related items, both technique books that gave him skill prompts and sheet music books that didn't.

"I've always wanted to learn how to play guitar," he mentioned off-handedly when he noticed the surprised look Hermione was giving him.

"I'm very happy that you've found something that interests you, Harry Potter," Luna said. "One thing Hogwarts has been missing for many years is the joyful noise of a music program. I am a singer myself and would love to have someone to accompany me."

"Yeah, that'd be great," Harry agreed. He smiled as he held up a copy of an illustrated book called _The Encyclopedia of String Instruments_. "I want to try my hand at instrument making, too."

"Wow," Hermione said as she added the skill book she had just picked up to her pile. The title said _Mostly Harmless_ in large, friendly letters on the cover. "I never would have thought… Hmm... I'm pretty sure I got... Yes, here it is."

She pulled out a book from her backpack called _The Secrets of the Master Luthier_ and handed it to him.

"This is great!" he said as he quickly leafed through the book. Much to her shock, he pulled her into a hug. "Thanks!"

Luna purchased a number of painting and sculpting books, though she appeared to be picking them more on how outlandish the designs or colors on the cover were than on content.

The three of them arrived back in Hogsmeade just before curfew, catching the last set of carriages back up to the castle. They were tired and hungry but glowing with excitement. They had much lighter pocketbooks but inventories that were practically bursting at the seams with hundreds of new books.

Moments after he stepped in the castle door, Harry was pulled aside by Hagrid. "I've something to show you," the groundskeeper said. "Can you come down to my house at midnight?"

Harry was pretty sure he knew what Hagrid wanted to show him, but he was still interested in getting a chance to scout out the dragons, so he agreed.

At the stroke of midnight, Harry, hidden under his invisibility cloak, knocked on the door to Hagrid's hut. After greeting his large friend, he followed as they went out into the woods, detouring by the Beauxbatons carriage to pick up Madame Maxime in the process.

Even knowing what he was going to be seeing, and even having seen Norbert, the size and majesty of the dragons took his breath away. After a few moments of staring gape-mouthed, Harry shook himself from his stupor and used Observe on the nearest dragon.

[Chinese Fireball  
Lv 30

HP: 12,500  
MP: 5,000

A very aggressive, fast and clever breed of dragon.  
Their egg shells can be used in potions.  
They eat mammals, mostly pigs and humans, so beware.]

Just as he clicked close on the info box, another message popped up. Harry stared at it in shock.

"Hmm," he whispered to himself. "That has possibilities." Quietly, he closed it as he backed away and picked his way down the path back to the castle, his mind turning over what he'd just seen and how he should alter his training plans for the next 48 hours, ignoring the deep murmur of voices behind him.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 20 (lvl +13)

HP 625  
MP 1250 (plus 625 plus 62.5)

STR 25 (lvl +14)  
VIT 23 (lvl +12)  
DEX 27 (lvl +10)  
INT 50 (lvl +30)  
WIS 28 (minus 5, lvl +15)  
LUK 27 (+/- 25) (lvl +20)

Money (Galleons): 450

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 20 (lvl +10)  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 15 (lvl +13)  
Sword Mastery: 24 (lvl +12)  
ID Create/Escape: 19 (lvl +6)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 5  
Sense Danger: 3 (lvl +1)  
Observe: 23 (lvl +6)  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 15 (lvl +4)  
French: Max (lvl +75)  
German: Max (lvl +50)  
Latin: Max (lvl +55)  
Signed English: Max (lvl +99)  
Spanish: Max (lvl +99)  
Russian: Max (lvl +99)  
Protego: 18 (lvl +17)  
Occlumency: 1  
Mana Affinity (Passive - 10% increase in MP recovery, 5% increase in total MP): Max (Created)  
Apparition: 15 (Created, lvl +14)  
Animagus: 1 (Created)  
Speed Reading: 1 (Created)  
Luthiery: 1 (Created)  
Music: 1 (Created)  
Smithing: 2 (Created, lvl +1)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 15 (lvl +8)

HP 450  
MP 1500 (plus 750 plus 375 plus 75)

STR 18 (lvl +8)  
VIT 18 (lvl +9)  
DEX 19 (lvl +10)  
INT 60 (plus 15, lvl +13)  
WIS 29 (minus 3.75, lvl +12)  
LUK 20 (lvl + 15)

Money (Galleons): -135

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 22 (lvl +10)  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max (lvl +99)  
Spanish: Max (lvl +99)  
Russian: Max (lvl +99)  
Physical Endurance: 10 (Created, lvl +9)  
Mana Affinity (Passive - 10% increase in MP recovery, 5% increase in total MP): Max (Created)  
Apparition: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Occlumency: 1 (Created)  
Speed Reading: 1 (Created)  
Enchanting: 1 (Created)  
Crafting: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 10 (lvl +4)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-26


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

After returning from his trip into the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid, Harry had a long chat with Sirius. Since he didn't know how long they'd be able to talk uninterrupted over the Floo Sirius quickly passed through a communication mirror that had originally belonged to Harry's father. While still on the fire call, they tested the mirrors and found that they were working perfectly. To make sure they wouldn't be interrupted, Harry took the mirror to the Room of Requirements where he proceeded to explain to his godfather about everything that'd happened in the last 3 weeks.

Sirius ran through a series of emotions during their call. He was frustrated that there was nothing he could do about Harry's entry into the Triwizard Tournament. He was terrified that Harry would have to face down a dragon. He was relieved that Harry had multiple plans and seemed quite sure at least one of them would succeed. He was jealous of Harry's new Gamer ability. He was in awe of what the Room of Requirements could do. And he was beyond excited that Harry was following in the Marauders' footsteps and planning on becoming an animagus.

With a promise that he'd call Sirius and Remus (who was staying with his old friend to try to relieve some of his boredom at being cooped up again) after the first task and when he found out what his form was going to be, Harry hung up the call. For the next two days, he was in especially high spirits as he trained to execute his new plan.

As he anxiously sat at lunch on Tuesday the 24th, Harry was almost quivering in anticipation and excitement. While he was confident his idea was going to work, assuming it was allowed, he'd also prepared several backups just in case. All of them he'd practiced so often he could now do them in his sleep. When the champions were finally instructed to head to the tent and prepare for the first task, he took off like a shot.

Not nearly soon enough, in Harry's opinion, Ludo Bagman came in and started to explain their task.

"I'll be calling you out individually when it's your turn to face your challenge," he explained as he held out a bag. "You'll need to get past it and collect a golden egg that contains your clue for the next event."

Harry perked up. "We don't have to kill it?"

Ludo looked horrified. "No! Absolutely not! Why, even the thought…"

He gave an exaggerated shiver before resuming his instructions. "Now, for you to pick what you'll be facing. Ladies first!"

From the bag, Fleur pulled a model of a Welsh Green.

"We have to face a dragon? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!" Harry remarked deadpan.

Wizards may not have any common sense, but most of them can detect sarcasm. Ludo was no exception. He looked over the faces of the assembled competitors and visibly deflated at what he saw. "You all knew, didn't you?"

"Yes."  
"Yup."  
"Oui."  
"Da."

"Fine," Ludo said with a pout. "You three select your opponents."

Viktor pulled the Chinese Fireball. Cedric got the Swedish Short-Snout.

"Great," Harry groused as he reached into the bag. "That means I got… yep, the Hungry Hungry Horntail."

Without another word, Ludo turned and left the tent. Harry closed his eyes and began to meditate, practicing Occlumency according to the instructions he had learned from one the books from the Room of Requirements.

A few minutes later, Cedric was called to compete. Fleur went next with Viktor following her. Eventually, Harry was summoned outside.

As soon as he stepped into the arena, Harry Observed the Horntail.

[Hungarian Horntail  
Lv 50  
HP: 20,000  
MP: 8,000

Widely considered the most dangerous breed of dragon.  
Shoots gouts of high-temperature flame up to 50 feet.  
Even faster and more deadly in the air than on the ground.  
They consider humans a delicacy.]

After a few moments, the message he was hoping to see popped up:

[Due to your affinity with reptiles, would you like to capture this dragon as a familiar?  
Yes / No]

A huge smile split Harry's face. "Yes!" he cried.

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

"Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

[Capture's level has risen by one.]

"Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

After 30 seconds, the audience started to jeer and boo when they didn't see Harry making any attempt to fight the monster.

"Mister Potter," Ludo called from the announcing booth, "aren't you going to even attempt to complete your objective?"

"I'm working on it right now," Harry called back. "Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

"Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

[Capture's level has risen by one.]

"Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

It was the most boring event to watch ever.

After 5 minutes of no movement other than speaking, Harry heard the dragon hiss at him. "Well, are you going to just sit there like a lump or are you going to attack me?"

"Why would I want to attack you?" he asked back. "You could probably swallow me without even chewing."

The Horntail chuckled. "That's true. But don't you want to see if you're up to the challenge?"

"No, thanks," Harry replied. "I'll just stay over here out of range, thanks. Capture"

"Suit yourself. I will get fed either way."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

"Capture."

[Capture failed. Skill level insufficient.]

[Capture's level has risen by one.]

For another 30 minutes, Harry continued to attempt to capture the dragon.

[Capture's level has risen by one.]

"Capture."

[Congratulations! You have acquired a dragon as a familiar. Don't you feel special?]

"Yes!" Harry cried, startling the few remaining spectators who hadn't abandoned the arena.

[Do you agree to the joining?

Yes / No]

Harry quickly accepted.

[New Status "Fire Element Affinity" has been created.]

[Fire Immunity created.]

[Skin of Dragon learned.]

[Flight learned.]

"Woohoo!" Harry shouted. He also cast one of the spells he'd learned recently, Somebody Else's Problem, on both the arena and himself to divert attention from what he was going to try next. "Flight!"

To his delight, he rose a few inches above the ground. A few seconds of experimentation let him learn enough control that he was able to head towards the Horntail's nest. Though shaky at first, he grew more steady as he moved along.

"What is your name?" he asked his new familiar as he traversed the distance.

"Adrienn."

"I'm Harry."

"I know, youngling. You are famous even in Romania and Hungary. Flame Hair has talked of you often."

"Great," he mumbled as he picked up the golden egg. "Now Charlie's going to hate me, too, since I stole one of his dragons."

[You obtained the quest item "Golden Dragon Egg".]

"While it's true that most of the dragons at the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary are their captives, I am not and never have been. Though I've been there long enough that no one there would likely remember, I am actually a free agent."

"Well, you learn something new every day," Harry said in surprise. "Anyway, I have to leave you here for a few minutes so I can complete the task they've assigned me. I'll come back and get you and your eggs as soon as I can. Although I have no idea where I'm going to keep you or how I'm going to feed you, but we'll figure something out."

As he left the arena, he was grabbed by Madam Pomfrey and forced through an examination.

"I can't believe you faced a dragon and didn't get injured!" she exclaimed after she confirmed he was OK.

"I stayed on the other side of the arena out of range until the dragon was pacified," he explained.

"Finally, someone in this tournament with some common sense," she said in approval. "Well, go on and get your scores."

"Oh! I'd kind of forgot about that!"

Madame Maxine gave him a 1. Barty Crouch gave him a 1. Ludo gave him a 5. Professor Dumbledore gave him a 7. Karkaroff attempted to give him a negative number but was overruled and forced to give him a 1.

Harry shrugged and headed back towards the castle. Just outside of the arena, he cast another Somebody Else's Problem charm on himself and doubled back. Quickly he crossed over and cast a couple charms on Adrienn and her eggs. First was another SEP, followed quickly by a Fidelius.

It was hilarious to watch the dragon handlers who had been trying to move his familiar. Once Harry cast his spells, they all of a sudden stopped, looked around in confusion and then began to wander away.

The time spent waiting for his examination and his marks had let him come up with an idea for how to house his dragon. After he cast an a succession of Finites to break her chain and put her eggs into his inventory through his enchanted backpack, he told Adrienn to wait outside near Gryffindor tower so he could go set up the Room of Requirements. He was going to make a room with an entrance suitable for her to get into the school and somewhere to set up her clutch.

"I will meet you there later, but I can smell that the forest is full to bursting with delicious morsels. There appears to be an all-you-can-eat buffet of spiders. I plan to see which gives out first: my appetite or the food supply," Adrienn said.

With that, she rocketed into flight, quickly shooting up over and then diving into the Forbidden Forest, leaving a surprised young wizard in her wake.

Deciding to begin working on setting up a comfortable setup for Adrienn and her clutch even if it'd be a little while until she returned, Harry headed inside. As he got up to the seventh floor, he could hear the noise of a party coming from the Gryffindor Common Room. He intended to just ignore it and go to his new sanctuary, but he was spotted and dragged into the party as he was passing the Fat Lady's portrait, much to his chagrin.

The first thing he saw as he walked in was a banner that said "Congratulations on No One Getting Killed!" He rolled his eyes as it became instantly apparent by the fact that no one even noticed his entrance that this really wasn't a party about him. The other students had apparently decided to have the party using whatever excuse they could come up with. He thought about railing on the hypocrisy and unfairness of it all but decided it wasn't worth wasting his breath. It would just traumatize the younger students and half of the older ones were already 2 sheets to the wind, with many more already completely trashed and most of the rest working that direction rapidly.

[Making good decisions causes your WIS to go up by 1.]

"Hey, mate," Ron said when he ambled past and spotted Harry. "Glad you're OK. After seeing you not even try, I realized you really didn't want to be in this, did you?"

"No, I really didn't."

"Well, I'm glad you're still alive and still have your magic, even though you didn't even do the task."

Harry stared at him. Obviously, Ron hadn't stayed to the end or he would have at least seen Harry getting his scores for completing the challenge. Surreptitiously, he whispered "Observe" in Spanish.

[Name: Ron Weasley  
Class: Slacker  
Level: Lv 4

HP: 200  
MP: 100

STR: 8  
VIT: 5  
DEX: 7  
INT: 4  
WIS: 2  
LUK: 6

Money: 0G

Slacker: -50% to WIS, -50% to INT, -25% to the same for all members of Party  
Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level]

Harry was struck dumb at the poor stats he saw for his classmate. How was he still able to function when his WIS was effectively 0?

"Well, I'm going back to the party," Ron said, apparently not noticing the look on Harry's face or his lack of real participation in the conversation.

Before Harry could regain his wits and exploit the fact he was currently without a conversation partner to make his escape, he was cornered by his Quidditch teammates.

"So, let's see this golden egg," Alicia demanded.

"Have you figured out the clue yet?" Angelina asked.

"Glad to be done?" Katie asked.

"Were you scared, Harry-kins?" one of the twins questioned.

"I know I would have been," the other added.

Harry reached in his backpack and pulled the golden egg from his inventory. As he saw more of his housemates gathering around, he hastily said, "Here. Why don't you guys see if you can figure it out while I go up and change clothes?"

Before anyone could object, he lit out of the room and up to his dorm. He had started storing all of his possessions in his inventory, so he really didn't need to go back to his room, but it did make a convenient excuse. He grabbed his cloak and a change of clothes from his inventory and ducked into the bathroom. A quick moment to use the facilities and a wardrobe change later he was heading back downstairs.

Just as he was coming down the stairs, he heard Angelina yell, "I got it!" As she came into view through the doorway, he saw her opening the egg.

Everyone got quiet as it opened just before it started making noise. First was a kind of a scraping, grinding sound. Then came a sort of whooshing sound. Then he heard a couple voices shouting things:

"Go!"  
"Hard!"  
"Whoa!"  
"Line's Good!"

Finally there was some banging and clicking. After about a minute of silence, it started over again.

While everyone else was distracted by the repeated sounds from the egg, Harry escaped the Common Room.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 20

HP 625  
MP 1250 (plus 625 plus 62.5)

STR 25  
VIT 23  
DEX 27  
INT 50  
WIS 29 (minus 5, lvl +1)  
LUK 27 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 450

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 20  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 15  
Sword Mastery: 24  
ID Create/Escape: 19  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 10 (lvl +5)  
Sense Danger: 5 (lvl +2)  
Observe: 23  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 15  
French: Max  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Protego: 23 (lvl +5)  
Occlumency: 6 (lvl +5)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 15  
Animagus: 1  
Speed Reading: 1  
Luthiery: 1  
Music: 1  
Smithing: 2  
Capture: 125 (Created, lvl +124)  
Fire Affinity: 1 (Created)  
Fire Immunity: Max (Created)  
Skin of Dragon: 1 (Created)  
Flight: 2 (Created, lvl +1)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 15

HP 450  
MP 1500 (plus 750 plus 375 plus 75)

STR 18  
VIT 18  
DEX 19  
INT 60 (plus 15)  
WIS 29 (minus 3.75)  
LUK 20

Money (Galleons): -135

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 22  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Physical Endurance: 10  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 5  
Occlumency: 1  
Speed Reading: 1  
Enchanting: 1  
Crafting: 1

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 10

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-02-29  
Updated 2016-03-02


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The next morning at breakfast, all that the Gryffindors could talk about was the egg and trying to solve the puzzle. Even with the hint from the info packet, Harry hadn't been able to come up with an answer.

He'd mentioned what he'd heard from the egg to Luna, but she'd only smiled. "You'll have your answer in plenty of time, Harry Potter," she said.

Though Harry was still mostly being shunned, the animosity seemed to have lessened. It actually seemed to be mostly out of habit now. His performance in the first task had shown that he really wasn't trying to steal Cedric's glory. People weren't sitting quite so far away as they had been before, even if they weren't crowding around to sit next to him.

Honestly, he was OK with that. The less that people wanted to associate with him, the more likely he was to be able to slip away uncontested to train in the Room of Requirements.

While he had some relative peace and quiet, Harry took a few moments to review the other skills he'd gained the previous day but ignored in his rapture over gaining Flight. Fire Immunity was pretty self-explanatory. Fire Affinity would let him cast fire spells with a lower mana cost and it appeared the cost would go lower as he levelled it up. When active, Skin of Dragon would give his skin the toughness of a dragon's hide while still maintaining the flexibility of normal skin, which was bloody awesome!

His contemplation was interrupted by a voice from behind his shoulder. "So, who's going to be on your curling team, Harry?"

Turning in shock, Harry saw Neville getting ready to sit in the spot beside him. "Curling?"

Neville shrank back at the question. "Isn't that what the egg was playing? Sounds from a bonspiel? Sorry, I guess not. I'll leave you alone now."

"No!" Harry said loudly, making Neville jump. "That's great! You're the first person to identify it."

"Really?"

Under the table, Harry gave the sign for Observe.

[Name: Neville Longbottom  
Class: Green Thumb  
Level: Lv 4

HP: 225  
MP: 500

STR: 9  
VIT: 6  
DEX: 5  
INT: 20  
WIS: 10  
LUK: 1

Money: 100G

Green Thumb: Add 400% to Herbology Skill Levels.  
Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Badly Mismatched Wand: Reduce wand magic skill level experience by 75%, increase MP cost by 100%.  
Painfully Shy: Reduce all levels by 50% when the center of attention.

Sword Mastery: 35  
Curling: 25  
Dancing: 50]

"Yeah, really. Thanks, Neville. So, I've never heard of Curling before. How much do you know about it?"

"Um, I know a bit," he hesitantly replied. "My gran and Uncle Algie have always made me play in the winter at family gatherings. Said it'd toughen me up."

"Could you teach us?" Harry quickly asked.

"Who's us?"

"Hermione, Luna and me. Do we need more people?"

"Well, it depends. Are we playing teams of 4? Mixed doubles?"

"I don't know anything about curling, so you tell me," Harry said.

"Oh. Well, we should start with the basics and with 4 of us we can practice doubles. We may want to add another 4 later so we can do full team games. But I don't know how we're going to practice since we don't have a sheet of ice, stones or brushes to use…"

"Hmm," Harry said. "I'll keep my eyes open for others to add to our group. As for the place to practice, I've got that covered."

"Oh. OK."

"I can show you after dinner tonight, but you have to promise to keep it quiet."

"As long as it doesn't take too long. I'm going to have a lot of homework to do and you know how long that takes me..."

"Don't worry. We'll have plenty of time and I promise we'll help you finish it."

Throughout the day, Harry used Observe on everyone he thought might be a good fit for joining them. He was mostly focused on those who hadn't been antagonistic towards him for the previous month. As he expected, the ones that seemed to be his best choices were his Quidditch teammates. After all, they already knew how to work together with him as a part of a team and their athletic stats were above average. To his surprise, though, it wasn't any of the chasers but the twins that had the best overall stats. Their INT scores were the most remarkable. They were almost as high as Hermione's had started. Their luck was also very high and their physical stats weren't too bad, either.

Much to his annoyance, Observe still refused to give him a hint about which twin was which. It showed their names as Gred and Forge, so he couldn't even use that to identify them properly. Their stats were exactly the same, too. Maybe the identification spells were failing because that's really how they thought of themselves...

After dinner, Harry, Neville and Hermione met Luna in the Room of Requirements. It was already open and in the configuration Harry had set up the previous day to host his new pet. Luna was sitting in one of the comfortable chairs and sipping on a can of ! while working on her homework. The first thing Harry did was reveal the Fidelius secret that Adrienn was his familiar to his friends so that they could see her tending her nest on the far side of the room. He also told the girls how Neville had solved the riddle of the egg and was going to help them train. While Neville was still gawking at the room and its now permanent occupant, Harry told Hermione and Luna about the twins' stats and sought their opinion of asking the pair to join them.

"Well, it means exposing the room to them, though they'd probably notice the door soon enough anyway," Hermione reasoned. "And I'm curious to see what they can come up with when given access to the books and equipment the room can create."

"Hermione! Are you actually encouraging their pranking?" Harry asked in mock shock. "I can't believe it!"

She stuck her tongue out at him.

Luna just smiled.

"No, you prat," Hermione said with a huff. "I'm hoping with what they learn here, they'll turn their efforts to something productive."

"I wouldn't count on that, but OK. I'll see if I can find them and bring them here," Harry said as he pulled the Marauder's Map from his Inventory.

"Check the Common Room," Hermione said. "It's Wednesday, so they're usually setting up shop there to sell some of their wares right about now."

"Yeah, they're there," he said. He quickly left and returned a few minutes later with Fred & George in tow. They were also in awe of the room, and even more so when Adrienn was revealed to them.

"How'd you get to keep the dragon?" they chorused.

"Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. First, let's start with this: Invite Party George."

Again, he was disappointed when he didn't get a reaction to differentiate the twins.

"Invite Party Fred. Invite Party Neville."

After starting up a 12:1 illusion barrier, he and Hermione with a little help (if one could call it that) from Luna proceeded to give a quick rundown of what had happened since Halloween.

Neville took it all in stride, though it was obvious that he was still processing everything that had been said.

The first thing out of Gred's mouth was utterly predictable. "You've had this ability this long and you haven't pranked anyone yet? We may have to take the Marauder's Map back!"

"What do you call stealing a dragon?" Harry riposted.

"That's great," said Forge, "but it took you a full month to do it!"

"Well, it's not like I wasn't busy," Harry protested. "I've learned a bunch of languages and more spells than Merlin!"

"That sounds boring."

"Yeah, what are you doing to spice up life?"

"Well, we have learned to Apparate despite Ministry regulations and a certain sacred text saying it's impossible to do here."

"How was I supposed to know that being in the Room of Requirements would get around that?" Hermione groused, still upset that a long-held belief was wrong and that one of her precious tomes was proven inaccurate.

"And we're going to start learning to be Animagi," Harry added.

"We are?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"Oh. Oops. I forgot to give you a copy of that book, didn't I?"

Hermione glared at him.

[Sense Danger has detected a threat.]

"Sorry. Here," he said as he pulled _Unleashing Your Inner Animal_ out of his inventory and made 5 copies that were quickly handed them to his friends. "Here's how this works. When you see the message pop up, click Yes and you'll instantly learn everything you need to know to become an animagus. Now, if I'm reading the instructions right, you should be able to-"

Fred and George disappeared. In their place were a pair of chipmunks. One had on a brown leather bomber jacket while the other was wearing a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt.

After just a few seconds, they transformed back.

"-change," he finished lamely as Luna started humming a tune he vaguely remembered hearing from when Dudley watched cartoons on TV.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of course you two would be Disney characters known for causing mayhem..."

Neville looked baffled at the change, and Hermione's comment didn't shed any more light on the situation. Regardless, though, he gave the skill a try himself. An instant later, a honey badger sat where he'd previously been.

Luna was replaced for a moment by a unicorn.

Having just bonded with Adrienn and considering how much he liked to fly, it was unsurprising that Harry was a large, black dragon widely known as a Night Fury.

After seeing the others find their form, Hermione forewent her usual cautious need for repeated review before taking any action and made the change herself. She was a large owl with dark brown wings and back and cream colored belly feathers with an orange beak and feet.

"Woohoo! That's more like it!" Gred said, grabbing his brother and Harry and hopping up and down in circles.

"Alright, alright," Harry said with a laugh as he tried to disengage from the excited duo. "Let me go, you hooligans! We've still got lots more to do yet tonight."

"Yeah! We have to be christened with our Marauder names. We, of course, are Gred and Forge."

"No, you're not," Luna said.

"Yes we are!" the twins argued back.

"You cannot pick your own Marauder names," Luna declared.

"Says who?"

"Why don't we ask the Marauders themselves?" Harry asked as he held up a mirror that he'd just pulled from his Inventory. He broke the Illusion Barrier in preparation for the call.

"You know the Marauders?!" the twins shouted.

Harry winced and wiggled his finger in his ear with his free hand. "Not so loud, guys. I'm standing right next to you. Yes, I know the Marauders. Padfoot!"

The communication mirror sprang to life. Absently, Harry wandlessly cast Engorgio and Wingardium Leviosa on it so that everyone could see and be seen.

"What's up, pup?"

"Sirius Black is Padfoot?" the twins cried again.

"And my dad was Prongs. And Professor Lupin is Moony. Hi, Professor."

"I'm not your professor anymore, Harry. You can call me Remus or Moony now."

"We were taught by a Marauder for a whole year and never knew it?" Gred asked, aghast.

Remus smirked at them.

"That's got to be the best prank you ever pulled!" Forge said.

"Who's Wormtail?" Gred asked.

Looks of fury fell across the faces of Harry, Sirius, Remus and Hermione, shocking the three newest members of the training group.

"We no longer acknowledge the traitor," Sirius said.

At the same time, Harry practically spat, "Pettigrew!"

"As much as we'd love to spend all night talking about our greatest hits collection, what did you want to talk about, Harry?" Remus asked.

"We've attained our animagus forms-"

"Already?!"

"Gamer skills, remember? When we're in a Party, they apply to others as well," Harry explained.

"I'm even more jealous now," Sirius muttered.

"Anyway, the twins said their Marauder names were going to be Gred and Forge."

"You can't name yourself," the older wizards chorused.

"That's what Luna said," Harry added.

"Thank you, Stubby Boardman, Professor," the girl in question said as she grinned.

Remus and Sirius shared a confused look. After a moment, Remus spoke. "Why don't you show us your forms and we'll discuss names."

The twins quickly switched to their Chipmunk forms.

Sirius and Remus exchanged glances again and promptly burst out laughing. "Well, that's easy," Sirius said when he finally regained control. "Messrs. Padfoot and Moony dub you two Chip and Dale."

Harry, Hermione and Luna all nodded. Neville still looked confused.

"Who's next?" Sirius asked.

Without saying anything, Luna transformed into her form.

After a moment of deliberation between the pair, Remus said, "We dub you Moondancer."

The unicorn bent her legs in a kind of bow before she cantered backwards.

Hermione switched next.

With just a quick look at his friend, Remus gave her name. "Archimedes."

"Are you ready for this?" Harry asked. He changed into his form and took a couple flaps up into the air before he changed back.

Sirius and Remus looked stunned. When they hadn't said anything after 20 seconds, Luna spoke up. "Trogdor."

When no one else spoke up, Harry said, "I like that, Luna. Thanks."

"When you go burninating, watch out for the knights and archers."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Well, I guess I'm the only one left, huh?" Neville said. He quickly took his alternate form before quickly shifting back.

Immediately, Luna suggested another name. "Mujina."

Remus shook his head. "No, that doesn't sound right. For some reason, he feels like a Randall."

"Really?" several voices asked.

"Yeah, I think so, too," Sirius said. "I don't know why, but Randall just feels right."

"Thanks, guys. We're going to have to let you go so that we can go back into time compression."

"OK, pup. Good night, and we're proud of you!"

Harry smiled as he reactivated the empty 12:1 time ratio Illusion Barrier. "Well, since we know what the next event is going to be, we need to start training. Hermione, did you pick up any books on curling last weekend?"

"I don't remember seeing one, no."

A book appeared in front of them. Without hesitation, Harry cast Gemino and created copies for each of them. 5 promptly disappeared in a flash of light and smoke.

"It says I've already learned that skill," Neville said as he leafed through the book. "And what's in here is centuries out of date. At least curling still has the same concepts, so this will give us somewhere to start. We should get a more up to date book if we can, though."

Hermione's eyes lit up at the thought of more book shopping.

"You still owe Harry and me from the last shopping trip," Luna, now involved in a staring contest with Adrienn, said without even turning to look, drawing a pout from the bookworm and surprised looks from most of the room's other inhabitants when they noticed where her attention wasn't.

"I was hoping you'd forget about that," she said. "Well, let's fight some monsters and make some money!"

"First we need to get everyone copies of all the skill books," Harry said.

"I can do that, Harry Potter, so that you can begin hunting," Luna said. "After all, practice makes permanent."

"It's practice makes perfect," Hermione corrected.

"Don't be silly, Hermione Granger. You'll continue to do something the way you practice, whether it's perfect or flawed."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense," Hermione said. "Well, come on, Harry."

"You go ahead. I feel like I should help Luna. And we really need to do something about Neville's wand. I'll ask Adrienn to keep an eye on you. If you get into trouble, holler and we'll come help."

"Oh. Well, if you think I'm ready..."

"What's wrong with my wand?"

"Hermione, you'll be fine. Neville, say Status Window and look at what it says."

While Neville reviewed his stats, Harry and Luna started copying books. Soon enough, all of the skills had been learned and training had begun in earnest. The twins were as anxious to collect some money as Hermione was. Harry wanted to work on his new Animagus skill while Luna convinced Neville they should work on crafting him a newer, more artistically designed wand, an idea that was helped along when the room provided several books on wandmaking and wandlore.

Several hours of subjective time later, Harry called a halt to the activities and gathered them all together in the sitting area. "While we've each been doing OK on our own, we need to make a plan for all of us together. Luna, Hermione and I have been training for a while, so you three guys have some work to do to catch up to our levels. The three of us have also picked up quite a few new skills that we haven't even started to practice. So, my proposal is that we should break up our time into 2 hour blocks to work on 5 different areas: physical training, monster fighting, producing items, magical subjects of individual interest and classwork. After we get everyone's physical stats up, we'll need to add a block to practice curling, too. And we'll work on our foreign languages by only talking in them instead of English, since that's worked well so far."

They thought about it for a few moments and decided that it was a workable plan. For the rest of the time-compressed night, they followed that routine, finally taking some time to sleep in beds provided by the Room of Requirements while still under time compression just before the rest of the school woke up for breakfast.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 20

HP 625  
MP 1250 (plus 625 plus 62.5)

STR 25  
VIT 24 (lvl +1)  
DEX 27  
INT 50  
WIS 29 (minus 5, lvl +1)  
LUK 27 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 450

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 22 (lvl +2)  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 15  
Sword Mastery: 24  
ID Create/Escape: 19  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 10  
Sense Danger: 5  
Observe: 26 (lvl +3)  
Snooker: 3  
Gemino: 20 (lvl +5)  
French: Max  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Protego: 25 (lvl +2)  
Occlumency: 6  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 20 (lvl +5)  
Animagus: 10 (lvl +9)  
Speed Reading: 8 (lvl +7)  
Luthiery: 4 (lvl +3)  
Music: 1  
Smithing: 5 (lvl +3)  
Capture: 125  
Fire Affinity: 3 (lvl +2)  
Fire Immunity: Max  
Skin of Dragon: 4 (lvl +3)  
Flight: 6 (Created, lvl +4)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 16 (lvl +1)

HP 475  
MP 1550 (plus 775 plus 387.5 plus 77.5)

STR 19 (lvl +1)  
VIT 19 (lvl +1)  
DEX 20 (lvl +1)  
INT 62 (plus 15.5, lvl +2)  
WIS 31 (minus 4, lvl +2)  
LUK 21 (lvl +1)

Money (Galleons): -100

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 27 (lvl +5)  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Physical Endurance: 12 (lvl +2)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 8 (lvl +3)  
Occlumency: 2 (lvl +1)  
Speed Reading: 7 (lvl +6)  
Enchanting: 4 (lvl +3)  
Crafting: 2 (lvl +1)  
Animagus: 1 (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 10

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Neville  
** Level 6 (lvl +2)

HP 250  
MP 525 (plus 262.5)

STR 10 (lvl +1)  
VIT 8 (lvl +2)  
DEX 8 (lvl +3)  
INT 21 (lvl +1)  
WIS 13 (minus 1.5, lvl +3)  
LUK 7 (lvl +6)

Money (Galleons): 110

Green Thumb: Add 400% to Herbology Skill Levels.  
Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Badly Mismatched Wand: Reduce wand magic skill level experience by 75%, increase MP cost by 100%.  
Painfully Shy: Reduce all levels by 50% when the center of attention.

Sword Mastery: 37 (lvl +2)  
Curling: 25  
Dancing: 50  
Animagus: 1 (Created)  
French: 10 (Created, lvl +9)  
Russian: 1 (Created)  
Signed English: 1 (Created)  
German: 1 (Created)  
Spanish: 1 (Created)  
Latin: 1 (Created)  
Wandmaking: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Apparition: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
Speed Reading: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Physical Endurance: 12 (lvl +2)  
Occlumency: 3 (Created, lvl +2)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Gred & Forge  
**Level 8 (lvl +2)

HP 325  
MP 975 (plus 487.5)

STR 13 (lvl +2)  
VIT 12 (lvl +2)  
DEX 11 (lvl +1)  
INT 39 (lvl +4)  
WIS 9 (minus 2, lvl +3)  
LUK 23 (lvl +3)

Money (Galleons): 30

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Twin Terror: Add 50% to magic effects when pranking, Twin-to-Twin Telepathy

Potion Creation: 20  
Physical Endurance: 12 (lvl +2)  
Animagus: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Alchemy: 8 (Created, lvl +7)  
French: 10 (Created, lvl +9)  
Signed English: 1 (Created)  
Russian: 1 (Created)  
German: 1 (Created)  
Spanish: 1 (Created)  
Latin: 1 (Created)  
Sword Mastery: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Apparition: 6 (Created, lvl +5)  
Speed Reading: 4 (Created, lvl +3)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-03-02


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Again, time began to blur together. Days were spent in classes while nights were spent grinding levels.

Much to Hermione's consternation, the twins snuck out of the castle during classes on Thursday and apparated from Hogsmeade to Aberdeen to visit a muggle bookstore in order to pick up a modern curling text. They came back with a book with a yellow and black cover proclaiming it was _Curling for Dummies_. Despite the title, Neville reviewed it and said the book was an excellent choice. It contained quite a bit that even he didn't know about the game.

Within a week of being integrated into the collective, Neville was able to make himself a wand that performed significantly better for him than his father's. It wasn't that his newly made wand was a spectacular super wand, because it wasn't. In fact, the grade was listed as Common. But due to Neville's knowledge of and skills with Herbology, he was able to pick a wood for the wand that came from a plant he had grown himself and with a core using hair from his animagus form. He was quite relieved to get rid of the Badly Mismatched Wand status effect. That, combined with his increased time to practice and do homework, was quickly noticed and complimented by the professors. The resulting boost to his confidence reduced his Painfully Shy status as well.

A week after the first task of the tournament, Harry found out that Dobby had come to the castle to work. He invited the little guy to join them in training for curling and asked him to bring another elf to fill out the second team of 4. Dobby and his friend Winky soon became a fixture in the training sessions, delivering food and drinks in addition to their athletic participation.

Two weeks before Christmas, Harry was asked to stay after class in Transfiguration. He didn't have long to wait before the Deputy Headmistress told him what was happening.

"There will be an announcement made at dinner tonight that we will be having a formal Yule Ball on Christmas evening. As a champion, you will be required to attend in dress robes and with a date. After dinner, you will also be required to open the dancing portion of the evening," Professor McGonagall said. Without giving him a chance to comment, she added, "You are dismissed."

As Harry turned to go, he saw a pair of messages appear:

[A quest has been created.]

[Yule Ball  
A night of food, politics and dancing to celebrate the Triwizard Tournament and the Champions.  
You must acquire a date and begin the dancing segment of the ball. While everyone stares at you.  
Warning: Accepting will enable the Romance sub-game and raise the rating to M.  
Yes / No]

In contrast of all the previous quests he'd received and immediately accepted, Harry took a few moments to think about this quest.

On the one hand, romance could be kind of fun. It was certainly something he'd want eventually.

On the other hand, from what he'd observed from his fellow Gryffindors, it could also be messy and painful. Now really didn't seem like the best time for it, what with someone trying to use the Triwizard Tournament to kill him. His schedule was already so full, he wasn't sure where he'd be able to fit romance into his schedule without sacrificing something else important. And if he hit Yes, he was going to have just 2 weeks to find a date for the Yule Ball and learn how to dance at least well enough to not embarrass himself, his companion or Hogwarts as a whole!

Turns out it wasn't a real hard choice after all. Carefully but emphatically, Harry tapped No. He was quickly greeted with another message:

[Alternative Yule Ball - "You've Got 99 Problems But…"  
Enjoy an evening of food and music with friends both old and new.  
Dancing is optional, but fun is mandatory!  
Dates are neither required nor encouraged.  
Dress code is casual. For those interested in participating, there will be a Christmas jumper contest.  
Yes / No]

"That's more like it," Harry mumbled as he hit Yes.

Even though it wasn't going to be required, the group still scheduled some training time for learning to dance. After all, no one wanted to make a fool of themselves and Neville was the only one with any real dancing experience. Quickly they discovered that it was rather fun and a great way to train VIT and DEX.

None of them were sad when classes ended for the winter break. It let them spend the day in training in addition to the night. With Adrienn as backup, they started facing tougher monsters, gaining more levels and better item drops.

One of Harry's strategies also paid off the day before Christmas when they fought an instant dungeon full of boggarts. On the third run through the dungeon, the boss dropped a skill book titled _Shifting Hand (and Arm, and Face, and…)_. It was hard to tell who was more excited when it gave them a Metamorph skill: Harry (so he could go out in the wider wizarding world and not get mobbed) or the twins (who were already planning out what mischief they could cause while wearing someone else's face).

When he reached level 20 in the Animagus skill just minutes later, Harry found that not only could he could stay in his animagus form longer, he could also shift to other animals. Whether it was because of the interaction between the new Metamorph skill or because of the level, Harry wasn't sure. Either way, he wasn't planning on looking a gift thestral in the mouth.

On the night of Christmas, the Yule Ball proved to be a lot of fun. With no pressure on him, Harry was able to sit back and enjoy the music and feasting. He ended up dancing most of the evening with his friends and housemates, spending more time on the dance floor than just about anyone else.

Everyone was pleased when they gained a significant experience bonus for completing the Yule Ball quest.

The rest of the break was spent improving skills, to great effect.

After they learned that Harry had become a polyanimagus, the twins redoubled their efforts on their shape shifting skills, splitting their time between practicing that and developing pranking products. When they first saw the _Abyss Auction_ , they nearly wet themselves. Their imagination went wild with how much money they could make selling some of their products and potions without needing the overhead of a store. Soon they had collected more galleons from auction sales than they'd ever seen before in their lives.

Neville found that his knowledge of Herbology was valuable for more than just picking materials suited to him. It also gave him an innate understanding of the interactions of wand woods and cores. He created a seller's account through the _Abyss Auction_ as well to sell off his training attempts. He bought a few materials through the Abyss, but more and more often he tasked Dobby and Winky to collect components locally for him. They easily agreed. With all of the work they were getting, they'd never been happier.

When he couldn't come up with anything he thought was catchier, he took a suggestion from Luna and named his business and Abyss account Neville's Organic Wands. While his products weren't yet very impressive or lucrative, his level was steadily rising while the sale amounts were going up exponentially. In the back of his mind, he was already planning a marketing campaign proclaiming "The Future's NOW!" if he ever decided to expand to selling outside of the _Abyss Auction_ listings.

Luna spent much of her time painting and sculpting. 9 times out of 10 the work focused on some sort of magical or imaginary creature, to no one's surprise. The prices she was getting for them in the Abyss, though, were simply astounding.

"Who knew there was such a market for depictions of fantastical beasts?" Hermione asked in surprise as she watched yet another in a steady stream of owls fly away with one of Luna's products.

"How else do you think _The Quibbler_ stays in business?" Luna replied. "We have a very dedicated and fanatical readership base."

One of the books Hermione had picked up in her November book buying spree was on Speed Reading. With that skill, she quickly checked out and read everything in the Hogwarts library that she felt was important to know. After that, she began to read anything that caught her eye. When she finished that, she started devouring everything she could find that she hadn't already read. By the time she'd begged and borrowed from the personal collections of her fellow students and most of the teachers, she'd discovered she held an interest in several surprising fields, among them architecture and design. The books in the school library were sorely lacking in those subjects so she was extremely glad Luna had picked up and loaned her quite a collection from their trip to London that would broaden her knowledge.

She was also becoming enchanted with enchanting the more she practiced it. The possibilities were endless. For her first major project, she made multiple-connection communication mirrors. She'd given them out to each of the Marauders (both the original recipe and Mark 2 versions of the group) as well as to Dobby and Winky. Best of all, she'd made a pair for her parents that were disguised and could be easily carried around by them every day. To the unknowing observer, the one for her mum appeared to be a compact and the one for her father looked like a cellular telephone. It took her until a few days after Christmas before she was finally able to work out all the kinks between the mirror, the muggle-repelling and the Somebody Else's Problem charms and get them sent off to her parents so Harry kindly volunteered to have them delivered by the Hedwig Express. His owl was more than pleased to have something to do. While the mirrors were presents that were a few days late, they were a hit all the same as each of the Grangers thought that being able to stay in touch in real time was a priceless gift.

Harry was really beginning to enjoy and excel at each of the disciplines he was studying. The blades he was smithing had quickly gone from "vaguely sword-shaped" to Rare grade. The musical instruments he was producing were quite playable. And the joy he experienced flying, both in his human and dragon forms, was indescribable.

But all good things must come to an end. Before they knew it, the Hogwarts Express had returned and the second term had begun.

During the first potions class, Harry noticed something shocking about Professor Snape. Out of curiosity, he had Observed the man just before class began.

[Name: Severus Snape  
Class: Slippery Snake  
Level: Lv 24

HP: 300  
MP: 1125

STR: 12  
VIT: 6  
DEX: 15  
INT: 45  
WIS: 15  
LUK: 18

Slippery Snake: +50% to LUK when evading life-threatening situations.

Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Potion Master: +50% to Potion Brewing experience.  
Dark Marked: Binds soul to caster, -5% to MP, -5% to HP, +25% to Dark Arts.  
Pavlov's Pooch: -75% INT, -100% WIS when "Potter" is heard or seen.

Occlumency: 75  
Legilimency: 70]

Harry stared at the status window for a few minutes trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Finally, he clicked on the status effect Pavlov's Pooch to see what it said.

[Pavlov's Pooch (Passive) Lv 25  
A curse invented and cast by Tom Riddle to amuse himself after seeing Severus' reaction to anything having to do with James Potter.]

All throughout the rest of the class, Harry puzzled over what to do about what he saw. Eventually, he settled on a plan and prepared to execute it. When the period ended, while the rest of the class scurried to exit, he dawdled, taking his time to clean his station and put his books away. After a minute, he looked up and saw that Snape was still sitting at his desk with his head down marking papers. Everyone else had exited the room, though Hermione and Neville were waiting at the doorway. He gave them a sign to step back inside.

'ID Create. Stupefy," Harry signed, pulling the professor and his friends into his illusion barrier and rendering the professor unconscious.

"Harry!" Hermione shouted. "You can't be knocking out teachers!"

As she pulled her wand and started to cast an Ennervate, Harry threw up a shield in front of the professor and shouted, "Wait!"

"Oh, this ought to be good," Neville muttered.

"He's under a curse from Voldemort!" Harry hastily explained, eliciting a gasp from his friends. "I'm going to try to remove it."

"Shouldn't we take him to the Headmaster or Madam Pomfrey?" Hermione asked.

"And how are we going to explain that I know about it? Let me try first and if we can't remove it, we'll tell Dumbledore."

"Alright, but if this goes wrong, I reserve the right to say I told you so."

"Noted. Finite."

[Status effect not reduced]

"Finite Pavlov's Pooch."

[Status Pavlov's Pooch not reduced]

"Finite Maxima Pavlov's Pooch."

[Status Pavlov's Pooch not reduced]

"Is it making any progress?" she asked as he tapped the last message.

"Maybe. It's saying status not reduced. Which implies that it can be reduced."

"If it was done by V-V-Voldemort, maybe you need to do it in Parseltounge?" Neville suggested hesitantly. He then gave a smile. "My WIS just went up by one, so that must be it!"

"Brilliant, Neville!" Harry said. "Finite Maxima Pavlov's Pooch."

Both of the conscious occupants of the dungeon jumped at Harry's hissed command, despite knowing it was coming.

[Status Pavlov's Pooch reduced.]

"Yesss! Finite Maxima Pavlov's Pooch!"

[Status Pavlov's Pooch reduced.]

[Due to repeated use of a special action, "Dispel" has been created.]

"Huh. OK, let's try that. Dispel."

[Status Pavlov's Pooch reduced.]

[Status Dark Marked reduced.]

"Whoa!"

"What?" Hermione and Neville chorused.

"It says it reduced both Pavlov's Pooch and Dark Marked."

"What?"

"Looks like I can get rid of both effects. Dispel."

It took a dozen more casts of Dispel before he was able to remove the Pavlov's Pooch status, netting him another 4 levels. It took 3 dozen (and an additional 5 levels) to get rid of Dark Marked.

Deciding they didn't want to deal with waking Snape up and possibly facing his wrath, they broke the illusion barrier and exited the room, leaving the professor to wake up naturally long after they had vacated the premises.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 30 (lvl +10)

HP 1125  
MP 1900 (plus 950 plus 95)

STR 45 (lvl +20)  
VIT 50 (lvl +26)  
DEX 48 (lvl +21)  
INT 76 (lvl +26)  
WIS 40 (minus 7.5, lvl +11)  
LUK 40 (+/- 25, lvl +13)

Money (Galleons): 2500

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 34 (lvl +12)  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 25 (lvl +10)  
Sword Mastery: 45 (lvl +19)  
ID Create/Escape: 23 (lvl +4)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 16 (lvl +6)  
Sense Danger: 9 (lvl +4)  
Observe: 41 (lvl +15)  
Snooker: 10 (lvl +7)  
Gemino: 21 (lvl +1)  
French: Max  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Protego: 75 (lvl +50)  
Occlumency: 14 (lvl +8)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 40 (lvl +20)  
Animagus: 45 (lvl +35)  
Speed Reading: 16 (lvl +8)  
Luthiery: 30 (lvl +26)  
Music: 8 (lvl +7)  
Smithing: 40 (lvl +35)  
Capture: 125  
Fire Affinity: 12 (lvl +9)  
Fire Immunity: Max  
Skin of Dragon: 20 (lvl +16)  
Flight: 26 (lvl +20)  
Curling: 25 (lvl +24)  
Dancing: 20 (Created, lvl +19)  
Metamorph: 25 (Created, lvl +24)  
Dispel: 10 (Created, lvl +9)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 28 (lvl +12)

HP 1000  
MP 2050 (plus 1025 plus 512.5 plus 102.5)

STR 40 (lvl +21)  
VIT 42 (lvl +23)  
DEX 39 (lvl +19)  
INT 92 (plus 23, lvl +30)  
WIS 45 (minus 7, lvl +14)  
LUK 37 (lvl +16)

Money (Galleons): 1800

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 50 (lvl +23)  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Physical Endurance: 30 (lvl +18)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 20 (lvl +12)  
Occlumency: 7 (lvl +5)  
Speed Reading: 73 (lvl +66)  
Enchanting: 25 (lvl +21)  
Crafting: 5 (lvl +3)  
Animagus: 4 (lvl +3)  
Curling: 20 (lvl +19)  
Dancing: 22 (Created, lvl +21)  
Architecture: 20 (Created, lvl +19)  
Design: 15 (Created, lvl +14)  
Metamorph: 4 (Created, lvl +3)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 23 (lvl +13)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Neville  
** Level 24 (lvl +18)

HP 925  
MP 1250 (plus 625 plus 62.5)

STR 37 (lvl +27)  
VIT 35 (lvl +27)  
DEX 30 (lvl +22)  
INT 50 (lvl +29)  
WIS 44 (minus 6, lvl +31)  
LUK 37 (lvl +30)

Money (Galleons): 2210

Green Thumb: Add 400% to Herbology Skill Levels.  
Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
(Badly Mismatched Wand: Status Removed)  
Painfully Shy: Reduce all levels by 25% when the center of attention. (Status reduced)

Sword Mastery: 52 (lvl +15)  
Curling: 40 (lvl +15)  
Dancing: 54 (lvl +4)  
Animagus: 4 (lvl +3)  
French: Max (lvl +90)  
Russian: 15 (lvl +14)  
Signed English: 45 (lvl +44)  
German: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Latin: 1  
Wandmaking: 38 (lvl +33)  
Apparition: 12 (lvl +8)  
Speed Reading: 25 (lvl +20)  
Physical Endurance: 25 (lvl +13)  
Occlumency: 12 (lvl +9)  
Mana Affinity: Max (Created)  
Metamorph: 3 (Created, lvl +2)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Gred & Forge  
**Level 28 (lvl +20)

HP 875  
MP 1750 (plus 875 plus 87.5)

STR 35 (lvl +22)  
VIT 36 (lvl +24)  
DEX 38 (lvl +27)  
INT 70 (lvl +31)  
WIS 36 (minus 7, lvl +27)  
LUK 65 (lvl +42)

Money (Galleons): 2500

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Twin Terror: Add 50% to magic effects when pranking, Twin-to-Twin Telepathy

Potion Creation: 27 (lvl +7)  
Physical Endurance: 18 (lvl +6)  
Animagus: 20 (lvl +15)  
Alchemy: 34 (lvl +26)  
French: Max (lvl +90)  
Signed English: 40 (lvl +39)  
Russian: 29 (lvl +28)  
German: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Latin: 1  
Sword Mastery: 25 (lvl +20)  
Apparition: 20 (lvl +14)  
Speed Reading: 18 (lvl +14)  
Curling: 22 (lvl +21)  
Dancing: 18 (Created, lvl +17)  
Mana Affinity: Max (Created)  
Metamorph: 35 (Created, +34)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-03-04


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

With the start of classes and reduction in available training time, Harry and the Marauders Mk. 2 reduced their focus to 3 segments: physical workouts, curling practice and individual work. While they enjoyed the narrowed focus and the productivity it brought them, as time went on, they became frustrated not to know what the composition of the competing curling teams would be, whether doubles or teams, mixed or single gender.

A week before the second task, they finally got their answer. The four champions were asked to gather together just after dinner in the anteroom to the Great Hall where Ludo Bagman would once again be giving them a briefing.

"So, have you all figured out the clue?" he asked.

The champions each nodded.

"Great! Are there any questions?"

"What's the competition format going to be?" Harry asked.

"Good question! We're going to have Harry face Fleur and Cedric against Viktor. The winners of each of those matches will face off to determine the overall winner. Each match will be for 8 ends."

"Who can we have on our teams?" Cedric asked.

"You can ask any of the students currently at Hogwarts, from any of the 3 schools, to join you."

"Are we playing teams or doubles?" Harry asked.

Ludo frowned. "There's more than one way to play?"

"This is your Head of Games and Sports?" Harry heard Viktor mutter in Russian, causing him to snort as he held in a laugh.

"Well, it'll be teams of 4," Ludo said.

"Will it be men versus women or mixed teams?" Fleur questioned.

"In the spirit of cooperation, we'd like to see at least one member of the opposite sex per team."

When no more questions were forthcoming, he dismissed them.

As had become their pattern, Harry met up with his friends who had already settled into the Room of Requirements for the evening. He explained to them what little he'd learned from the meeting.

It ended up not being a very tough decision regarding who would or wouldn't be playing. Since only students were eligible, Dobby and Winky were out. Luna would be reporting on the event for _The Quibbler_. While Neville was the most experienced player, he wasn't interested in being the focus of so much attention and immediately volunteered to be the team coach instead. That left the team consisting of Harry, Hermione, Fred and George.

They quickly determined they'd have Hermione shooting Lead, Gred and Forge 2nd and 3rd and Harry the Skip. On a suggestion from Neville, though, they made a departure from normal and had Hermione calling line when Harry was throwing instead of one of the twins. The pair of them worked so well together as brushers, much like they did as beaters on the Quidditch pitch, that everyone agreed it was best to let them team up as much as possible.

On the bright, crisp, cold morning of February 24th students, staff and spectators gathered on the shore of the Black Lake to watch a different sport than they were used to seeing at Hogwarts. The first match, between Harry and Fleur, was eagerly being anticipated and wagered upon, even if most of the audience had no idea how curling was played. Or even what it was, really.

From the very beginning with the draw to the button, though, it was obvious that it was going to be a one-sided contest. Fleur had trouble keeping her balance after pushing off the hack and barely managed to get the stone into the house. Her teammates, a pair of girls from Beauxbatons and Roger Davies from Ravenclaw, were hardly able to avoid being hit by the stone on the way down the ice. Harry and his team barely brushed and still managed to get their stone to the top of the 4 foot ring, claiming the hammer to begin the game.

With the hammer they scored 5 in the first end. They managed to steal 3 in the second end as well, and it would have been more had Fleur not managed to get the last stone just inside several of Harry's in the 8 foot ring. After the third end, they'd added another 4 to bring the score up to 12-0.

It was so lopsided that Neville started coaching Fleur's team, too. By the 6th end, they had improved enough that Fleur was actually able to draw the last rock right down onto the button and score their first point. She was so excited that she launched herself at Neville, wrapping him in a hug and giving him a great big kiss.

After a few seconds she jumped back as she realized what she'd just done. Her face was almost as red as Neville's as she apologized in rapid French, though you could practically see the joy that was still radiating off of her. Her team had to concede the game early as they were mathematically eliminated 18-1, but at least they hadn't been shut out.

The second game was much closer. Viktor's team was the prohibitive favorite, as he was surrounded by professional curlers, but Cedric had picked a team of Scots who were no slouches, either, as they'd been curling all their lives. Scoring was tight the whole game, exchanging points with the hammer. Eventually, though, the experience and training of the pros won out when they were able to steal a point in the 8th and final end by threading the last stone through 3 of Cedric's to give Viktor's team an 8-5 victory.

The consolation game between Fleur and Cedric was much closer than her first match had been. Neville again assisted the representative from Beauxbatons and her team, but it was still a fairly easy win for the Hogwarts champion, 9-3. Even in the loss and despite not having much experience, Fleur was able to make the shot of the day when she threw a rare runback quad to steal one of her points.

The championship match was one for the ages. After a day of watching matches, the spectators were starting to pick up the rules and some of the strategy, so they were even more into the event than they had been earlier in the day.

Viktor won the hammer by drawing right to the center of the button, besting Harry's very respectable rock that ended up just 2 inches from the pin. The rest of the game was even more tightly contested. It was a textbook demonstration of straight guards, ticks, corner guards, takeouts and how a team can work together as a unit.

Harry's team had a small advantage with the coordination of the twins and their brushing. Viktor's team was a little better at controlling their speed from the hack to the hog line. Their line and weight calls were pretty closely matched, even though Harry's were augmented a bit with judicious use of his Observe skill.

At the 4th end break, Viktor was up 3-2 with the hammer going into the 5th end. He managed to score a 3 by bumping Harry's 2nd shot stone out and away far enough to leave his the closest in the 8 foot ring. Harry responded with a 2 in the 6th by sneaking his last stone around Viktor's guard and in just far enough. Viktor added a single point in the 7th. Harry's stone ended up being 2nd shot by just a hair, preventing them from getting 2 and resulting in a score of 7-4 going into the final end.

Viktor's team did a very good job of clogging up the house and it was looking bleak for Harry as the skips took their shots. Viktor placed a good, but not quite perfect, right corner guard with his last stone. For Harry to win, he'd have to throw a heavy takeout shot and get some lucky bounces. With time about to run out, he released his final stone. It struck the guard, knocking it back and to the left, glancing off of another of Viktor's stones and knocking it back and to the left and just barely missing his stone at the bottom of the 8 foot ring. By knocking those stones out with his runback double, Harry managed the 3 he needed to tie, taking them to a closing draw to the button.

But, much to the disappointment of the primarily Hogwarts crowd, a win for the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't to be. A mentally and physically tired Harry overshot on his draw attempt, ending up bottom 12. Viktor was as precise as always and left his stone with the edge over the pin, sealing his victory and the most points from the event heading into the final task.

For years to come at Hogwarts, while Quidditch paused for the winter, there would be both pickup and league curling matches held, all due to the interest in the game generated that day.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 34 (lvl +4)

HP 1550  
MP 2250 (plus 1125 plus 112.5)

STR 62 (lvl +17)  
VIT 64 (lvl +14)  
DEX 60 (lvl +12)  
INT 90 (lvl +14)  
WIS 46 (minus 8.5, lvl +6)  
LUK 40 (+/- 25)

Money (Galleons): 3000

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 40 (lvl +6)  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 32 (lvl +7)  
Sword Mastery: 55 (lvl +10)  
ID Create/Escape: 31 (lvl +8)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 18 (lvl +2)  
Sense Danger: 9  
Observe: 50 (lvl +9)  
Snooker: 10  
Gemino: 21  
French: Max  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Protego: 90 (lvl +15)  
Occlumency: 33 (lvl +19)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 60 (lvl +20)  
Animagus: 57 (lvl +12)  
Speed Reading: 25 (lvl +9)  
Luthiery: 37 (lvl +7)  
Music: 12 (lvl +4)  
Smithing: 49 (lvl +9)  
Capture: 125  
Fire Affinity: 14 (lvl +2)  
Fire Immunity: Max  
Skin of Dragon: 44 (lvl +24)  
Flight: 31 (lvl +5)  
Curling: 55 (lvl +30)  
Dancing: 20  
Metamorph: 49 (lvl +24)  
Dispel: 25 (lvl +15)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 33 (lvl +5)

HP 1500  
MP 2750 (plus 1375 plus 687.5 plus 137.5)

STR 60 (lvl +20)  
VIT 61 (lvl +19)  
DEX 50 (lvl +11)  
INT 110 (plus 27.5, lvl +18)  
WIS 52 (minus 8.25, lvl +7)  
LUK 37

Money (Galleons): 2400

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 70 (lvl +20)  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Physical Endurance: 38 (lvl +8)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 35 (lvl +15)  
Occlumency: 20 (lvl +13)  
Speed Reading: 98 (lvl +25)  
Enchanting: 40 (lvl +15)  
Crafting: 8 (lvl +3)  
Animagus: 7 (lvl +3)  
Curling: 48 (lvl +28)  
Dancing: 22  
Architecture: 32 (lvl +12)  
Design: 24 (lvl +9)  
Metamorph: 10 (lvl +6)  
Medium Mana Capacity; 1 (Created)  
Eidetic Memory: 3 (Created, lvl +2)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 28 (lvl +5)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Neville  
** Level 27 (lvl +3)

HP 1250  
MP 1500 (plus 750 plus 75)

STR 50 (lvl +13)  
VIT 45 (lvl +10)  
DEX 42 (lvl +12)  
INT 60 (lvl +10)  
WIS 46 (minus 6.75, lvl +2)  
LUK 40 (lvl +3)

Money (Galleons): 2600

Green Thumb: Add 400% to Herbology Skill Levels.  
Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Painfully Shy: Reduce all levels by 25% when the center of attention. (Status reduced)

Sword Mastery: 60 (lvl +8)  
Curling: 55 (lvl +15)  
Dancing: 62 (lvl +8)  
Animagus: 8 (lvl +4)  
French: Max  
Russian: 30 (lvl +15)  
Signed English: 75 (lvl +30)  
German: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Latin: 1  
Wandmaking: 60 (lvl +22)  
Apparition: 21 (lvl +9)  
Speed Reading: 33 (lvl +8)  
Physical Endurance: 29 (lvl +4)  
Occlumency: 20 (lvl +8)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Metamorph: 7 (lvl +4)  
Coaching: 10 (Created, lvl +9)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Gred & Forge  
**Level 33 (lvl +5)

HP 1200  
MP 1875 (plus 937.5 plus 93.8)

STR 48 (lvl +13)  
VIT 46 (lvl +10)  
DEX 50 (lvl +12)  
INT 75 (lvl +5)  
WIS 46 (minus 8.25, lvl +10)  
LUK 80 (lvl +15)

Money (Galleons): 3000

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Twin Terror: Add 50% to magic effects when pranking, Twin-to-Twin Telepathy

Potion Creation: 33 (lvl +6)  
Physical Endurance: 20 (lvl +2)  
Animagus: 34 (lvl +14)  
Alchemy: 55 (lvl +21)  
French: Max  
Signed English: 80 (lvl +40)  
Russian: 40 (lvl +11)  
German: 1  
Spanish: 1  
Latin: 1  
Sword Mastery: 33 (lvl +8)  
Apparition: 35 (lvl +15)  
Speed Reading: 25 (lvl +7)  
Curling: 42 (lvl +20)  
Dancing: 18  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Metamorph: 65 (+30)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-03-07


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

For the next 4 months, life was peaceful and quiet for Harry and his friends. It was a marked but welcome change from the chaos and terror that had pervaded Harry's previous 3 years at Hogwarts. With the use of the Room of Requirements and Harry's time-compressed Illusion Barriers, their normal schoolwork became laughably easy to deal with. The completion of the second task and the relative calm also let them resume their previous schedule of time splitting and saw remarkable results.

Luna continued to work on producing art. In addition to painting, drawing and sculpting, she spent a significant amount of time developing her skills with a camera. When outside of the Room of Requirements, she was often found picking the brain of Colin Creevey. (Harry was exceedingly pleased that the younger boy was kept so busy with keeping ahead of Luna's queries that he stopped hounding him!)

She was also frequently found experimenting with odd and unusual Animagus forms, turning into a host of animals that had previously only had form in her mind's eye. She revealed a knack for creative writing as well, producing works that Hermione said were every bit as good as any fantasy novels she'd ever read.

Neville really started to come into his own as his skills levelled up. Due to the recognition he received for his noticeably improvement in the classroom and the integration into his personality of his primary animagus form, his Painfully Shy status effect was finally eliminated. His wandmaking became so good that he reached a point where he started experimenting with alternative materials and configurations - rings, staves, gauntlets, bracers and even a joint effort with Harry to make musical instruments that could be used to channel magic. As he became more proficient at wandmaking, he also found himself becoming more aware of the flow of magic all around him. That sense sent him down the path of learning about enchanting and spell creation.

After seeing the pure joy on Luna's face as she was making her art, he decided to pick up a set of tools and learn how to carve himself. When he started using those skills in combined with his wandmaking, he started turning out true masterpieces.

He gifted some of his creations to each of his friends. They so far outperformed their original wands that each of them began to use the new wands for all their daily tasks and his other products for specialized functions.

When working with Harry on the instruments, Neville found that he was having as much fun playing their creations as he was helping in the manufacturing and decided to dedicate some of his time to learning to play. Before too long, the two of them were jamming out nightly while Luna sang.

In a twist of irony, when Neville reached 100 INT, the wandmaker randomly gained an ability to use wandless magic, something that amused his friends to no end.

Fred and George continued to spend time focusing on the skills to develop products that would be funny and make money. They also spent countless hours practicing their shape-shifting and coming up with humorous things they could do and places that they could go as someone or something else.

When they reached 100 INT, the twins gained a talent in Technopathy. Due to years of exposure to their father, they had at least a passing familiarity with electronics. Harry and Hermione proved to be an invaluable source of insight for them as well.

In order to expand their production, they acquired their own elf, Daffy, from the Abyss Auction. Daffy was soon scouring the countryside looking for discarded electronics, both functioning and for parts. Soon the twins were reconstructing or building from scratch electronic devices that ran off of magic instead of electricity. After they made a holographic projection TV/movie player, they became hooked on muggle Sci-Fi programs and started turning movie magic into reality. Before long, each of their friends were equipped with phasers, blasters and even lightsabers.

They also put together several computers that ran off of magic and modified a plotter to be able to use parchment instead of paper. Everyone was overjoyed when they realized that they were now going to be able to do homework in a word processor where they could easily make additions and corrections without having to rewrite their entire scroll of homework.

Though she had initially started doing physical training to be able to fight higher-level monsters and earn more money for books, Hermione found that she thoroughly enjoyed the exhilaration of their physical training. (The resulting changes to her figure were certainly appreciated as well, even if she was going to need a whole new wardrobe when she got home for the summer. It was a good thing they'd gotten all of those books on Crafting!) When the Hogsmeade weekend came, and with it another trip into London to visit the book markets, she made a point of picking up up as many books on martial arts as she could. She also purchased entire bookshelves worth of college textbooks and professional drafting texts as well as quite a number of coffee table books on great architecture of the ancient and modern world.

To her delight, she'd picked up the talent of Eidetic Memory when she'd reached 100 INT.

In the limited time that she didn't spend reading, doing classwork or working out, she began working on design work of her own. Much to her surprise, she found that Luna was the one who was best able to help her learn the art and science of drawing, even if those skills weren't easily discerned in the abstract painting the younger girl tended to produce.

Harry was overjoyed to get plenty of time to explore his animagus forms and fly with his familiars, Adrienn and Hedwig. He spent so much time in the air that it became second nature to him. He had to consciously remember not to change or fly in the halls where people would see him, though he did put his metamorph talents to frequent use to hide in plain sight. When he reached 100 INT and got a talent for creating immersive and palpable Illusions he was only too happy add that to his arsenal.

His creative side thrived as well. The work with Neville to create magically-imbued instruments produced some of the finest looking and sounding guitars and violins that he'd ever dreamed of. The instruments and weapons he was creating were consistently of a grade of Rare. When his luck swung in the right direction, he also created quite a few Legendary items. He was quite glad to have Hermione enchant the blades and be able to make a generous profit from the _Abyss Auction_ selling off his work.

Through their training, they'd all experimented with various edged weapons the room had provided. Luna was fond of using a combination of a set of sais and shuriken. The twins fell in love with using katanas. Neville kept with family tradition and liked his longswords. Hermione tended towards a more modern rapier, while Harry was quite attached to the Sword of Gryffindor. It was with that in mind that Harry had made each of them a set of their preferred blade or blades along with daggers and throwing stars (enchanted to return after use) that they could take with them outside of the Room of Requirements.

While playing around on the computer and trying to learn what did what, Harry opened up the programming code to one of the scripts in a text editor. To his surprise, he found that he could read it just like if it was English. It wasn't until after one of their book-buying trips to London where he had picked up several guides on computer languages that he discovered why it was coming so easily. The programming he had been doing was in a language called Python. Magic obviously had a twisted sense of humour.

As the semester wound down, Adrienn's eggs hatched. The thunder of baby dragons quickly became as fond of the humans around them as the humans were of the not-so-little guys and gals. It wasn't unusual to see them following after Harry and friends as they worked out or did some dungeon crawling.

It was bloody hilarious to watch them try to imitate Hermione as she went through some of her katas.

Now that they had several dragons and animagi with dragon forms available for backup, plus more levels and strength, they upped the level of the monsters that they faced again. At this point, they were facing 4 and 5 X creatures. The consensus was that these would more than prepare Harry for the final task of the Triwizard Tournament, not to mention giving them better loot and experience.

The most interesting item drop that they got from a boss was a skill book that gave them a Teaching skill. With a little bit of experimentation, they discovered that they could use it to pass on their unique skills to each other. Harry spent the most time imparting new skills to the others as he had quite a number of talents that he hadn't learned from skill books as well as the perks he'd picked up from the original _The Gamer's Guide_.

After he taught them Parseltounge, the room was soon filled with the sounds of everyone hissing at each other. The dragons were delighted to hear their native language. And more than a bit amused at some of the incorrect pronunciations and phrasing their pet humans were using.

The morning of the final task, Harry armed and armored himself before leaving the Room of Requirements for the day, disillusioning his weapons, and casting Silencio and Somebody Else's Problem on them so as not to draw any attention. This was going to be the last chance to use a Triwizard task to kill him so he was preparing appropriately and would be on his guard. He only stopped layering weapons on when Luna told him that he was as prepared as he needed to be. She also reminded him that he would always have his Inventory with him, a fact that made him blush in embarrassment.

The day passed much too slowly for Harry's tastes. If he didn't know any better, he would have sworn that he was still in a time-compressed Illusion Barrier. After the interminable wait, though, it was finally go time. He was going to rampage through the maze, and if whoever had entered him into the bloody Tournament hadn't already made their attempt on him when he finished, the Marauders Mk 2 were going to start actively searching. That person was going to reap the whirlwind.

Harry was going to be third to enter the maze, behind Viktor and Cedric but before Fleur. As with the first task, he practiced his Occlumency while he waited to be released. As soon as he was given the go-ahead, he was off like a shot, disappearing quickly from sight of the observers.

Luna was right. There was nothing in the labyrinth that could give Harry any trouble anymore. With all of the work Harry had put into his offensive and defensive skills, not to mention the weapons he had created, he was more than prepared. He had drawn his best sword from the sheath as he ran. He had Skin of Dragon activated at full power, a Protego shield surrounding him and any number of his best spells on the tip of his tongue. As he powered through the maze, though, he found he wasn't even having to stop for the monsters, dispatching them with wandless spells as he approached or with sword strokes as he ran past and casting Accio behind him to collect the loot they were dropping. He was barely even slowing down for the obstacles, simply casting his Dispel on them and waiting a few moments for the magic to fizzle out.

In just a few minutes, he reached the center of the maze untouched and barely even breathing hard. Before him stood his objective.

"Observe."

[Triwizard Cup  
The symbol of triumph over the odds and your peers.  
Unfortunately, just like Lord Stanley's Cup, you don't actually get to keep it, though you can show it off to your friends for a little while.  
Note: This cup is a portkey that will take the winner from the center of the maze to the judges' stand to be rewarded.]

With a smile, Harry grabbed the cup. Instantly, he was whisked away.

[You obtained the quest item "Triwizard Cup".]

Instead of arriving on stage, though, he was roughly thrown to the ground somewhere large, open and too dark to see well.

"Observe."

[Little Hangleton Graveyard  
Final resting place of Tom Riddle.]

[Name: Peter Pettigrew  
Class: Traitor  
Level: Lv 12

HP: 250  
MP: 225

STR: 10  
VIT: 3  
DEX: 12  
INT: 9  
WIS: 5  
LUK: 20

Money: 0G

Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Traitor: -75% to relationships.

Animagus: 40]

[Name: Tom Marvolo Riddle  
Class: Dark Lord  
Level: Lv ?

HP: ?  
MP: 6000

STR: 78  
VIT: 26  
DEX: 48  
INT: 95  
WIS: 15  
LUK: 18

Money: NAN

Wizard: +50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Split Soul: -50% to WIS, -25% to INT  
Homunculus: -90% to STR and DEX.  
Dark Marker: +5% to MP, +5% to HP per marked soul.

Parseltongue: Max  
Flight: 65]

The instant the information registered in Harry's mind, he was on the move. He took flight immediately and threw an illusion of himself back where he'd dropped the cup. He sent it juking along the ground on a parallel course to his real body. He tried to apparate away but found that there were anti-apparition wards ups.

"After him, Wormtail! Wrap him up!"

When the voice spoke, Harry was finally able to pinpoint where the two dark wizards were through the gloom. He circled around them from above. While they were focusing on the projection, Harry silently launched some rapid fire Stupefies.

The most powerful Dark Lord of the last 50 years was promptly squashed under the unconscious body of his tubby underling.

"Incarcerous. Mobilicorpus," Harry cast as he came back down to Earth. He floated Peter off of the Volde-munculus and stunned and bound each of them again for good measure.

Now that he had them under control, Harry took another chance to Observe his would-be captors. There was nothing overly interesting in Pettigrew's stats, but he did see something of note in Tom's.

[Homunculus.

A small humanoid construct created by dark magic.]

"Huh," Harry said. "Let's see if this'll work. Dispel."

[Homunculus level reduced.]

"Dispel."

[Homunculus level reduced.]

"Dispel."

[Homunculus level reduced.]

"Dispel."

[Homunculus dispelled.]

Before Harry's eyes, the body Riddle was inhabiting dispersed, though his wraith-like spirit was left, still apparently unconscious from the Stupify. Not taking any chances, Harry cast a Protego shield around it to keep the thing contained and pulled it into an Illusion Barrier so it couldn't escape. His Magic Sensing skill was also showing him tentacles of magic connected to the spirit and heading off in all directions. Most were flowing towards Tom, but there were also several that were more like static links.

"Dispel."

[Spirit binding reduced.]

It took almost 100 casts of Dispel before the message finally changed.

[Spirit has been exorcised and released to its final judgement.]

[Quest "Peace In Our Time" Completed.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

"Yes!" Harry cheered, pumping his fists and dancing around. "I am the smartest man alive!"

After a few moments, a monumentally tall pile of loot appeared where Tom had been. Without further ado, Harry started to shove items into his Inventory, glancing at a few of them as he did.

Some of the skill book titles creeped Harry out. He couldn't think of a good reason why he'd ever need a Life Drain skill or Necromantic rituals. Quite a number of books, though, were things he hadn't even known were possible. There were a number of parchments that looked like legal documents as well that were stored for later review.

There was also a large amount of money, jewels and other trinkets that he collected. On the top of the pile were a gothic gold cup, a locket, a ring with a big black stone, some kind of gaudy, discoloured headband and a large roll of snakeskin, all of which were thrown into his inventory to deal with later.

After a few minutes, he'd collected all of the spoils of his victory and left the instant dungeon. He levitated a still unconscious but now twitching Pettigrew back over to where he'd dropped the Triwizard Cup upon his arrival. A quick touch to the trophy and both of them were transported back to Hogwarts.

[Quest "Triwizard Tournament" Completed.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

They dropped into a scene of pure chaos. Aurors, Hit Wizards and Witches and members of the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol were swarming all over the place. There was a row of bodies lined up in front of the stage, all writhing in pain.

A chorus of voices cried out, "Harry!"

"What's going on?" he asked as his friends all converged on him, wrapping him up in a group hug.

"We're not sure," Hermione responded. "A few minutes ago, several audience members, Aurors and Professors Karkaroff and Moody just started convulsing. And seconds later, Moody's body changed like he was under polyjuice and it was wearing off. Then their arms started smoking. The Headmaster and Minister Fudge must have called in everyone they could from the DMLE as the Director and her people started arriving moments later."

"It happened when you vanquished Voldemort," Luna declared.

"WHAT?!"

The shout was nearly deafening and come from more than just Marauders Mk. 2. Soon, a sea of voices started shouting questions so quickly he couldn't even respond.

"What happened?"  
"Where did you go?"  
"Was He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named really alive?"  
"How did you defeat him?"  
"Is he gone for good now?"  
"Who's that at your feet?"  
"What took you so long?"  
"Did you win the tournament?"

It took a minute before Dumbledore, Fudge and a professional-looking woman with a monocle pushed their way through the quickly growing crowd and reached Harry.

"Harry, this is Madam Bones, the Director of Magical Law Enforcement," Albus said after he erected a silencing field around the group. He opened his mouth to speak further when he was interrupted.

"Belgium! Is that Peter Pettigrew?" Amelia asked.

"Yes," several people replied.

"He's supposed to be dead! Excuse me a minute," she said, stepping away and summoning several of her people. Within moments, several burly members of the MLEP had come forward and bundled Wormtail off to the Ministry of Magic. "Now, what happened?"

[Quest "Avenging the Marauders" Completed.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

[Your level went up by 1.]

"It's a long, long story," Harry said.

"Voldemort arranged to kidnap Harry but he reversed the trap and defeated him, capturing the traitor in the process," Luna said airily.

"OK, so maybe not that long," Harry lamely added.

"B-B-But Lord Thingy can't be back!" Fudge protested as he wiped away the sudden perspiration from his brow.

"Well, he was, kind of, but he's gone again," Harry replied. "For good this time. You'll never have to worry about him again."

The minister visibly relaxed at that comment.

"I think we'll need a little more than that for the official report, Mr. Potter," Amelia said.

For the next 10 minutes, Harry, with a little help from his friends, explained what had happened over the last year. They explained how Sirius Black was his godfather and Pettigrew was the betrayer and an illegal animagus who had been living with the Weasley family. They told how this year he'd been entered into the Triwizard Tournament against his will and he explained how he had stunned and bound Wormtail. Without revealing his Gamer ability, he told them that he'd used several spells he'd discovered while preparing for the tournament to destroy the construct that Riddle was using and banish his soul to the afterlife. Bringing Peter back was so that he could get justice for his godfather.

The Headmaster explained how Moody had turned out to be Barty Crouch Junior, a convicted Death Eater and apparently the one that had entered Harry in the tournament under his master's orders. He was revealed, along with the rest of the Death Eaters, when their Dark Marks had started causing unbearable pain and made their magic start acting up.

Madam Bones and Minister Fudge pledged to get to the bottom of the matter with Sirius. While Amelia left to organize her people, the Minister made a speech about how Harry was a hero and so courageous in his fight against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He also presented Harry with his winnings, which he set aside to split with his friends.

All the while, the Wizarding Wireless was still broadcasting. If Harry thought he had been well known before as the Boy-Who-Lived, he was going to hate the recognition he would get as the Boy-Who-Won for his heroics throughout the night.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Harry  
** Level 60 (lvl +26)

HP 2500  
MP 3175 (plus 1587.5 plus 158.8)

STR 100 (lvl +38)  
VIT 108 (lvl +44)  
DEX 107 (lvl +47)  
INT 127 (lvl +37)  
WIS 86 (minus 15, lvl +40)  
LUK 70 (+/- 25) (lvl +30)

Money (Galleons): 15,000

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level  
Loki's Plaything: LUK +/- 25

A Gamer's Mind: Max  
A Gamer's Body: Max  
Physical Endurance: 53 (lvl +13)  
Blunt Weapon Mastery: 36 (lvl +4)  
Sword Mastery: 78 (lvl +23)  
ID Create/Escape: 45 (lvl +14)  
Parseltounge: Max  
Finite: 20 (lvl +2)  
Sense Danger: 18 (lvl +9)  
Observe: 55 (lvl +5)  
Snooker: 17 (lvl +7)  
Gemino: 24 (lvl +3)  
French: Max  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Protego: 140 (lvl +50)  
Occlumency: 55 (lvl +22)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 89 (lvl +29)  
Animagus: 135 (lvl +78)  
Speed Reading: 41 (lvl +16)  
Luthiery: 86 (lvl +49)  
Music: 48 (lvl +36)  
Smithing: 95 (lvl +44)  
Capture: 125  
Fire Affinity: 24 (lvl +10)  
Fire Immunity: Max  
Skin of Dragon: 99 (lvl +55)  
Flight: 84 (lvl +53)  
Curling: 60 (lvl +5)  
Dancing: 27 (lvl +7)  
Metamorph: 120 (lvl +71)  
Dispel: 60 (lvl +35)  
Illusions: 26 (Created, lvl +25)  
Teaching: 24 (Created, lvl +23)  
Typing: 30 (Created, lvl +29)  
Medium Mana Capacity: 12 (Created, lvl +11)  
Enchanting: 9 (Created, lvl +8)  
Eidetic Memory: 21 (Created, lvl +20)  
Martial Arts: 20 (Created, lvl +19)  
Magic Sensing: 30 (Created, lvl +29)  
Spell Creation: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
Technopathy: 6 (Created, lvl +5)  
Wandless Magic: 19 (Created, lvl +18)  
Computer Programming: 12 (Created, lvl +11)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Hermione  
** Level 64 (lvl +31)

HP 2625  
MP 3750 (plus 1875 plus 937.5 plus 187.5)

STR 105 (lvl +45)  
VIT 103 (lvl +42)  
DEX 110 (lvl +60)  
INT 150 (plus 37.5, lvl +40)  
WIS 97 (minus 16, lvl +45)  
LUK 77 (lvl +40)

Money (Galleons): 6,000

Bookworm: Add +100% to Skill Level Experience, +25% to INT  
Witch: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level

French: Max  
Sword Mastery: 110 (lvl +40)  
German: Max  
Latin: Max  
Signed English: Max  
Spanish: Max  
Russian: Max  
Physical Endurance: 54 (lvl +16)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Apparition: 45 (lvl +10)  
Occlumency: 33 (lvl +13)  
Speed Reading: 143 (lvl +45)  
Enchanting: 84 (lvl +44)  
Crafting: 25 (lvl +17)  
Animagus: 12 (lvl +5)  
Curling: 55 (lvl +7)  
Dancing: 50 (lvl +28)  
Architecture: 60 (lvl +28)  
Design: 45 (lvl +21)  
Metamorph: 18 (lvl +8)  
Medium Mana Capacity; 18 (lvl +17)  
Eidetic Memory: 65 (lvl +62)  
Martial Arts: 40 (Created, lvl +39)  
Typing: 15 (Created, lvl +14)  
Teaching: 13 (Created, lvl +12)  
Magic Sensing: 14 (Created, lvl +13)  
Spell Creation: 8 (Created, lvl + 7)  
Technopathy: 9 (Created, lvl +8)  
Smithing: 1 (Created)  
Capture: 1 (Created)  
Fire Affinity: 10 (Created, lvl +9)  
Fire Immunity: Max (Created)  
Skin of Dragon: 22 (Created, lvl +21)  
Flight: 6 (Created, lvl +5)  
ID Create/Escape: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
Parseltounge: Max (Created, lvl +99)  
Observe: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
Sense Danger: 12 (Created, lvl +11)  
Dispel: 1 (Created)  
Illusions: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
Magic Sensing: 6 (Created, lvl +5)  
Wandless Magic: 16 (Created, lvl +15)  
A Gamer's Mind: Max (Created)  
A Gamer's Body: Max (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Luna  
** Level 45 (lvl +17)

Other stats: Indeterminate

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Neville  
** Level 55 (lvl +28)

HP 2250  
MP 3000 (plus 1500 plus 150)

STR 90 (lvl +40)  
VIT 75 (lvl +30)  
DEX 80 (lvl +38)  
INT 120 (lvl +60)  
WIS 96 (minus 13.75, lvl +50)  
LUK 70 (lvl +30)

Money (Galleons): 25,000

Green Thumb: Add 400% to Herbology Skill Levels.  
Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
(Painfully Shy: Status removed)

Sword Mastery: 93 (lvl +33)  
Curling: 60 (lvl +5)  
Dancing: 75 (lvl +13)  
Animagus: 19 (lvl +11)  
French: Max  
Russian: Max (lvl +70)  
Signed English: Max (lvl +25)  
German: Max (lvl +99)  
Spanish: Max (lvl +99)  
Latin: Max (lvl +99)  
Wandmaking: 130 (lvl +70)  
Apparition: 42 (lvl +21)  
Speed Reading: 55 (lvl +22)  
Physical Endurance: 55 (lvl +26)  
Occlumency: 31 (lvl +11)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Metamorph: 23 (lvl +16)  
Coaching: 12 (lvl +2)  
Magic Sensing: 41 (Created, lvl +40)  
Spell Creation: 8 (Created, lvl +7)  
Enchanting: 12 (Created, lvl +11)  
Music: 16 (Created, lvl +15)  
Carving: 9 (Created, lvl +8)  
Wandless Magic: 13 (Created, lvl +12)  
Teaching: 26 (Created, lvl +25)  
Typing: 14 (Created, lvl +13)  
Medium Mana Capacity: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Technopathy: 1 (Created)  
Smithing: 3 (Created)  
Capture: 1 (Created)  
Fire Affinity: 6 (Created, lvl +5)  
Fire Immunity: Max (Created)  
Skin of Dragon: 13 (Created, lvl +12)  
Flight: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
ID Create/Escape: 1 (Created)  
Parseltounge: 50 (Created, lvl +49)  
Observe: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
Sense Danger: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
Dispel: 1 (Created)  
Illusions: 2 (Created, lvl +1)  
Eidetic Memory: 17 (Created, lvl +16)  
Martial Arts: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
A Gamer's Mind: Max (Created)  
A Gamer's Body: Max (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Gred & Forge  
**Level 56 (lvl +23)

HP 1925  
MP 2525 (plus 1262.5 plus 126.3)

STR 77 (lvl +29)  
VIT 71 (lvl +25)  
DEX 72 (lvl +22)  
INT 121 (lvl +46)  
WIS 73 (minus 14, lvl +27)  
LUK 110 (lvl +30)

Money (Galleons): 30,000

Wizard: Add 50% to MP, -0.25 to WIS per Char Level.  
Twin Terror: Add 50% to magic effects when pranking, Twin-to-Twin Telepathy

Potion Creation: 45 (lvl +12)  
Physical Endurance: 38 (lvl +18)  
Animagus: 58 (lvl +24)  
Alchemy: 80 (lvl +25)  
French: Max  
Signed English: Max (lvl +20)  
Russian: Max (lvl +60)  
German: Max (lvl +99)  
Spanish: Max (lvl +99)  
Latin: Max (lvl +99)  
Sword Mastery: 50 (lvl +17)  
Apparition: 49 (lvl +14)  
Speed Reading: 40 (lvl +15)  
Curling: 46 (lvl +4)  
Dancing: 29 (lvl +11)  
Mana Affinity: Max  
Metamorph: 123 (+58)  
Medium Mana Capacity: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Technopathy: 30 (Created, lvl +29)  
Typing: 45 (Created, lvl +44)  
Teaching: 12 (Created, lvl +11)  
Smithing: 3 (Created, lvl +2)  
Capture: 1 (Created)  
Fire Affinity: 5 (Created, lvl +4)  
Fire Immunity: Max (Created)  
Skin of Dragon: 8 (Created, lvl +7)  
Flight: 12(Created, lvl +11)  
ID Create/Escape: 1 (Created)  
Parseltounge: 60 (Created, lvl +59)  
Observe: 8 (Created, lvl +7)  
Sense Danger: 2 (Created, lvl +1)  
Dispel: 1 (Created)  
Illusions: 9 (Created, lvl +8)  
Magic Sensing: 4 (Created, lvl +3)  
Wandless Magic: 7 (Created, lvl +6)  
Eidetic Memory: 14 (Created, lvl +13)  
Martial Arts: 3 (Created, lvl +3)  
Spell Creation: 10 (Created, lvl +9)  
A Gamer's Mind: Max (Created)  
A Gamer's Body: Max (Created)

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-03-10


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

It took Harry and his friends hours to sort through everything he'd picked up after defeating Voldemort. The money and jewels were easily divvied up but the sheer volume of other objects was nearly overwhelming.

The consensus was that Harry's first impressions were right - some of those skills were just too evil to be used. Harry was going to keep them in his inventory just in case they were ever needed, but everyone hoped they'd never have to see the light of day again, even as reference material for advanced defense.

But among the depressingly dark titles were other skill books that were real treasures. They had already learned Flight and Wandless Magic, but it was good to have the skill book to teach them some of the finer points of technique. The book on Legilimency would be useful, as would the one on Warding. _Formal Dueling and No-Holds Barred Fighting_ seemed like it would be invaluable, though hopefully with the neutralization of Tommy and the Dee Eat Band there wouldn't be as great of a need to know how to street fight any time soon. The Legendary grade books on Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, Conjuring and Non-verbal Casting would be great when they reached the minimum skill levels to learn them. But the skill that had them the most excited was Telepathy.

Hermione, Luna and Neville almost fainted when the saw the items that Harry had picked up from the top of the pile. Hesitantly, Luna reached out, picked up the tiara and set it on her head. She gave an immediate sigh of relief as her face relaxed in bliss, straightening stress lines that had been there so long that no one had even noticed they were there until they were gone.

"Have you any idea what you've got here, Harry Potter?" she asked.

Harry shrugged. "Not really, though it seems like you guys recognize something about them I guess I should have Observed everything, but there was so much stuff and I was anxious to get back that I threw it all in my inventory to deal with later and barely even glanced at most of it. So, what did we get?"

Hermione and Neville gaped at him while Luna calmly explained. "You collected several Founder's artifacts. This is Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem, an item which will fortify the mind and increase the wearer's intellect. It will also keep a seer or clairvoyant in the here and now.

"The cup was Helga Hufflepuff's and is said to possess magical qualities related to healing potions. Personally, though, I think it just makes everything you drink from it taste of blueberries."

Everyone stared at Luna.

"Blueberries? Surely you can't be serious!"

Luna morphed herself into the shape of Harry's godfather. "I am Sirius. And don't call me Shirley. It was, after all, Helga's favorite flavor. Anyway, the locket was Salazar Slytherin's and is also heavily enchanted. So together, you have artifacts from 3 of the 4 Founders of Hogwarts. I think the most interesting item, though, is the ring. The symbol on it is of the Deathly Hallows, so I believe this is the fabled Resurrection Stone. My father will be ever so excited to see it as he has searched most of his life for the Hallows."

"That's great, Luna. Why don't you go ahead and take it?"

"Thank you, Harry Potter," Luna said with tears in her eyes. "This means more to me than you can possibly know!"

"It's nothing, Luna. What are friends for? But can you do me a favor, please?"

"Anything."

"Can you shift back to your normal look? It's disturbing hearing your voice coming from that body."

With a nod and a pleased smile, Luna reassumed her original appearance

"As for the Founder's items, let's study them and see if we can figure out and copy their enchantments. Then maybe we can make some sort of display for them, along with Gryffindor's Sword, and present it to the Headmaster?" Harry suggested.

"We can do that!" the twins shouted as they hurried away to a newly appeared wood shop.

"I'll help, too," Neville said. "I'll make sure they don't booby trap it or embed any sort of pranks."

"Would we do that?"

"Yes."

"He knows us so well, brother mine."

"Too true."

In addition to the books and treasures, Harry also found he was now the holder of the deeds to several properties in Little Hangleton that had been Voldemort's. The group made plans to check out the areas after school was dismissed, hoping to find a place where they could train during the summer holiday. If not, Sirius had offered to let them train at one of the Black family properties. Nothing was likely to be able to match the Room of Requirements but a wide open practice room of some sort, combined with Harry's ID Create skills, would give them something workable.

Harry was pretty sure Sirius was more interested in having them at one of his places so he could mooch some of the talents they'd picked up, but Harry wouldn't begrudge the man some fun. He had already been planning to invite the two remaining Marauders to join in, so it certainly wouldn't be an imposition. He figured that Sirius would love to pick up the family trait of Metamorph, especially as it'd let him be inconspicuous in public. Just like the twins, the pranking potential would appeal to him as well.

Harry was also working on a theory about Remus but would need to Observe him to be sure. He thought and hoped that Dispel might be able to break the Werewolf curse. He was sure Remus would be ecstatic if it worked the way he expected. He also had a theory that using his abilities and combining the Party system with their Teaching skill would allow Hermione's parents to learn some magic. He was planning to surprise her with that little nugget when he visited her house some time in the next few weeks.

Adrienn told him that she was planning to take her thunder of babies on a little tour of Eastern Europe over the summer. She was going to show them their native land of Hungary before stopping in Romania at the Sanctuary to get them a checkup. (They were going to need their vaccinations against common ailments like Human Pox, after all!) Hopefully by the time she returned, Harry would have set up somewhere that they could live outside the Room of Requirements.

All too soon, the leaving feast was upon them, followed the next morning by the trip on the Hogwarts Express back into the wider world. With the plans they'd made, the skillsets that they'd learned and the items they'd purchased and created, though, they knew that life was never going to be dull.

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

 **Author's Note** : And that's the end of that. I hope you've enjoyed the story!

If you have (or even if you haven't), please take a few minutes to leave me a review. It's the only payment I get for writing. It's also the only way I'll know what you liked, what you didn't and what I can do to become a better author.

This is especially true if you're marking the story as one of your favorites! Please, please, PLEASE let me know what you liked that made it so.

Another reason reviews are so important is that they give me inspiration. They both spur me on to complete projects and feed my imagination.

I currently have no plans for a sequel. I won't say it'll never happen, but I currently don't have any ideas that I feel would make a compelling story, either as a writer or for a reader. (Hint: This is yet another way you could review and help me out…)

If I do end up writing a sequel, it'll likely be a crossover of some sort. I just don't see anything in the wizarding world that would be any sort of threat to dragon-backed Gamer Harry and friends...

To address a few of the questions that have come up in reviews:

Harry didn't go and blab about this great gift/skill he'd gotten to just anyone. He told Hermione, and only after pulling her out of the hallway and into an empty classroom. For much of the book series, she was his most loyal friend and also served as his left brain. It makes sense to me that he'd tell her so they could analyze it together (or, at the time, really so she could do it for him). Also, don't forget, he's only 14 years old. Teenagers tend not to think clearly or long-term, when they think at all...

The stat lists basically only included what was relevant to the storyline of this fic. There are quite a few things that could have been listed but weren't. For example, spell categories like Charms, Curses, Transfiguration, etc. They very well could (and possibly should) have been included, but I didn't think they added anything to do put them in. I had enough trouble trying to keep all of the skills and levels straight as it was. I ended up with a spreadsheet that was like 400 lines long just to track stats. Instead of tracking every possible thing, I felt my time and effort would be better spent developing the storyline.

There are a lot of things that were like that. For example, I could have included every shot from the Curling match in detail. I just couldn't see how that would help the narrative of the story. Things like Snape's reaction to having the Dark Mark removed fall into that same category. The action happened, but it just took place off screen.

Why did they have a skill called "Sword Mastery"? Three reasons. First, it's a skill directly from the manhwa. Second, the Sword of Gryffindor is a key item several times in the books. Third, and most importantly, boys, especially teenage boys, tend to think like this: "Sword fighting? Cool! Let me try!" (At least, those were my thoughts when I was a teenaged boy…)

I included the full skill list every chapter because that's how I like to see it, with the indication after the number showing what changes there were in this chapter. Yes, it got long at the end. And I understand that some people prefer it other ways (just the changes, just shown every so many chapters, just at the end, etc.), but I had to make a decision on how I wanted to implement it, and this is it.

As for the destruction of Voldemort being anticlimactic, well, that was kind of my point. As a homunculus, he was no match for a powered up Harry. If he'd gotten his body back, well, that'd be a completely different story... (and one I'd be willing to include as an omake, if I get inspiration or something)

Again, thanks for reading and reviewing!

~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~-,._.,-~'`^`'~

Published 2016-03-12


End file.
